Can not see /mnt

Linux and Unix-Like Linux
1

Hi,
on Linux RED HAT when I issue df -k , I do not have a line with /mnt.
I have already done mount -t /mnt but not yet ok. What shoule I do ?
Thank you.

[root@xxx mnt]# df -k
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup_ID_8300-LogVol4
                       4515496    642072   3644048  15% /
/dev/sda3                99150     18942     75088  21% /boot
none                   4153272         0   4153272   0% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/VolGroup_ID_8300-LogVol5
                        507748     10750    470784   3% /tmp
/dev/mapper/VolGroup_ID_8300-LogVol8
                      13030536   3122692   9245932  26% /usr
/dev/mapper/VolGroup_ID_8300-LogVol7
                        507748    146845    334689  31% /var
/dev/mapper/VolGroup_ID_8300-LogVolHome
                       7869904   1539336   5930800  21% /home
/dev/mapper/VolGroup_Ext-LogVolExt
                     576694832 472361004  75039444  87% /Data
2

I am not a Linux guy, but general Unix troubleshooting steps follow:
Is the /mnt mount information specified in /etc/fstab?
If not, then your mount command specified above was incomplete.
Is the underlying volume/FS available for mounting?
Does the /mnt directoy have files/dirs in it? If so, the system could be trying to prevent an overlay mount.

3

Thank you frozentin.
Is the /mnt mount information specified in /etc/fstab?No.
If not, then your mount command specified above was incomplete. How to complete ?
Is the underlying volume/FS available for mounting? Yes I can do cd /mnt.
Does the /mnt directoy have files/dirs in it? If so, the system could be trying to prevent an overlay mount. What to do then ?
Thank you.

4

You are missing the FS device path. You need to specify that.

You mis-understood my question. "cd /mnt" is not the way to check this. You need to find out the device that has the filesystem laid out on it, and see whether that is available. The device name will be something like /dev/mapper/... (see other devices listed in your df o/p above)"

You haven't answered the question. But, in general the OS will prevent you from mounting FSs on mount points which contain files/dirs. You have two options in such a case:
[1] Move the contents of /mnt to another dir, and then mount /mnt FS
or
[2] Read the man-page for mount and figure out how to tell the system to ignore the underlying files and dirs under /mnt and just go ahead and mount the /mnt FS as specified on the command line.

5

According to my df -k result , how should I specify FS device path ?
Thank you.

6

/mnt is AFAIK used to mount temporary devices: Flash drives, memory cards, or loopback devices as examples. That's why there is no fstab entry (as opposed to, say /media/cdrom).
You can mount a device if you know it's device path (block file in /dev) and when it's filesystem is supported by Linux (almost any out there):

$ mount <device> <dir> # generic
$ mount /dev/sdg1 /mnt # most flash drives I know

To find out the path for a temporary device, look at the last few lines of dmesg

7

Thank you.
When I issue

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

it appears after df -k :

/dev/sda1                31648      3636     28012  12% /mnt

but it is not the right file system regarding to result of

ls -l /mnt

total 140
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root    87 Mar 18  2005 autoexec.bat
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root root 56797 May 15  2006 command.com
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root    55 Nov  1  2005 config.sys
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root root 28799 May 15  2006 dellbio.bin
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root root 32042 May 15  2006 dellrmk.bin
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root  2048 May  5  2006 dellup
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root root 15121 May 15  2006 himem.sys
8

Why not? Dell apparently used the first partition for it's restore software, and hid the partition. Do an 'fdisk -l /dev/sda'. You'll probably be surprised over the actual list of partitions in your system.