On Sunday 14 November 2004 23:06, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 14 November 2004 22:40, Colin Murphy wrote:
A curious collection of problems I've amassed. It would appear that I have a partition that I can read and write to even if it is not mounted:-
Can someone explain how this can be please?
OK, let me try
When a linux system starts up, you have one partition mounted, the so-called "root" partition. in this partition, you have a number of directories, one of them is called /data1. If you don't do anything else, and you create a file in /data1, that file will be created on the root partition just as it would in any other directory
Now, if you "mount" another partition on /data1, what you're saying to the system is "everytime the user wants to do something in /data1, it should happen on this other partition". So after "mount /dev/hda5 /data1", if you do "ls /data1" the system will show you the contents of the hda5 partition. The file you created before you mounted the hda5 partition will still be there on the root partition, it's just that the system hides it while hda5 is mounted.
/data1 isn't special just because it's a "mount point", it's just a regular directory. You can use any directory as a mount point for other partitions.
(trying to think of some descriptive analogy, it's hard, how about this:) Think of /data1 as a magician's trick door. Behind the door is a regular room, but when you throw a switch, the door suddenly leads out to the garden. The original room, along with what you put in it, is still there, but while the switch is on (the partition is mounted) whenever you go through the door you will get to the garden
Yeah, ok, lame analogy, but it's the best I could do on short notice :)
No, not lame. Not at all. It is just another way of describing what happens here: $ mkdir /data1 $ echo "This is the first test" >> /data1/testfile.txt $ cat /data1/testfile.txt This is the first test $ mount /dev/hda17 /data1 $ echo "This is the second test" >> /data1/testfile.txt $ cat /data1/testfile.txt This is the second test $ umount /data1 $ cat /data1/testfile.txt This is the first test Cheers, Leen