What happens If I delete mount points?
 

Hi all,
This may be a silly question but here goes...

Running RH7.2 I have mounted 2 Windoze partitions with entries in fstab - which works fine. They are mounted at
/mnt/win98 and /mnt/win2000

Am I correct in assuming that if I decide to delete either of these mount points whilst the partitions are mounted that my Windoze partitions would be unaffected (as opposed to being deleted etc).

Or how about if I were to delete /dev/hda1 for example - I presume I just lose my ability to access that particular partition until I reconstruct /dev/hda1 (not sure how I would?!).

Not that I intend to try this - just curious as to possible effects.

Regards
GeeTee
:newbie:

Your assumptions are correct, deleting the mount points from the fstab won't do anything to your windows partion. Just the ability to access them through Linux will be lost. But to get them back just redo the mount and all well :)

Hi,

I actually meant deleting the /mnt/win98 directory rather than the entry in fstab.
I think it has the same ramifications (ie not much) but I'd like to be sure.

On a similar thread, here's the relevant bit of my /etc/fstab

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win98 vfat defaults 1 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/win2000 vfat defaults 1 0

What are the 'defaults' options 1 0 and why are other entries defaulted to 1 1 ?

Just curious...

Regards
GeeTee

You cant delete a mount point when something is mounted on it you will get /xxxx busy.
With no mount point you cant mount. I mount most things
directly rather than use fstab ie
mount -t reiserfs /dev/hda4 /music
All mounts in a script run at boot time togeter with other stuff
works for me.

The 1
This field is used by the dump utility to determine which filesystems should be backed up when dump is invoked. A 0 tells dump that the filesystem does not need to be dumped. A 1 indicates that it should. If you don't use dump, it doesn't matter what you set the field to.

The 0
Check Sequence Number Used by fsck to determine the order in which to conduct file system integrity checks during reboot. This field may use a 0, 1, or 2. 0 indicates that no-check is needed (used for cdrom, proc, swap, windows drives). 1 indicates that the filesystem should be checked first (used for the root partition.) 2 should be used for any other filesystems that could become corrupt. These will be checked after the / filesystem

http://www.frankenlinux.com/intro/fstab.html