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MOUNT(2)		      System Calls Manual		      MOUNT(2)

NAME
       mount, nmount, unmount -- mount or dismount a file system

LIBRARY
       Standard	C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
       #include	<sys/param.h>
       #include	<sys/mount.h>

       int
       mount(const char	*type, const char *dir,	int flags, void	*data);

       int
       unmount(const char *dir,	int flags);

       #include	<sys/uio.h>

       int
       nmount(struct iovec *iov, u_int niov, int flags);

DESCRIPTION
       The  mount()  system  call  grafts a file system	object onto the	system
       file tree at the	point dir.  The	argument data describes	the file  sys-
       tem  object  to	be mounted.  The argument type tells the kernel	how to
       interpret data (See type	below).	 The contents of the file  system  be-
       come  available	through	 the new mount point dir.  Any files in	dir at
       the time	of a successful	mount are swept	under the carpet so to	speak,
       and are unavailable until the file system is unmounted.

       The  nmount() system call behaves similarly to mount(), except that the
       mount options (file system type	name,  device  to  mount,  mount-point
       name,  etc.)  are  passed  as an	array of name-value pairs in the array
       iov, containing niov elements.  The following options are  required  by
       all file	systems:

	     fstype    file system type	name (e.g., "procfs")
	     fspath    mount point pathname (e.g., "/proc")

       Depending  on  the file system type, other options may be recognized or
       required; for example, most disk-based file systems  require  a	"from"
       option  containing  the pathname	of a special device in addition	to the
       options listed above.

       By default only the super-user may call the mount() system call.	  This
       restriction can be removed by setting the vfs.usermount sysctl(8) vari-
       able to a non-zero value; see the BUGS section for more information.

       The  following  flags  may  be  specified to suppress default semantics
       which affect file system	access.

       MNT_RDONLY	The file system	should be treated as  read-only;  even
			the  super-user	 may  not  write  on  it.   Specifying
			MNT_UPDATE without this	option will  upgrade  a	 read-
			only file system to read/write.

       MNT_NOEXEC	Do  not	 allow files to	be executed from the file sys-
			tem.

       MNT_NOSUID	Do not honor setuid or setgid bits on files when  exe-
			cuting	them.  This flag is set	automatically when the
			caller is not the super-user.

       MNT_NOATIME	Disable	update of file access times.

       MNT_SNAPSHOT	Create a snapshot of the file system.	This  is  cur-
			rently	only  supported	 on  UFS2  file	 systems,  see
			mksnap_ffs(8) for more information.

       MNT_SUIDDIR	Directories with the SUID bit set chown	new  files  to
			their  own  owner.  This flag requires the SUIDDIR op-
			tion to	have been compiled into	the kernel to have any
			effect.	 See the mount(8) and chmod(2) pages for  more
			information.

       MNT_SYNCHRONOUS	All  I/O  to  the  file	system should be done synchro-
			nously.

       MNT_ASYNC	All I/O	to the file system should  be  done  asynchro-
			nously.

       MNT_FORCE	Force  a  read-write mount even	if the file system ap-
			pears  to  be  unclean.	  Dangerous.   Together	  with
			MNT_UPDATE  and	MNT_RDONLY, specify that the file sys-
			tem is to be forcibly downgraded to a read-only	 mount
			even if	some files are open for	writing.

       MNT_NOCLUSTERR	Disable	read clustering.

       MNT_NOCLUSTERW	Disable	write clustering.

       MNT_NOCOVER	Do not mount over the root of another mount point.

       MNT_EMPTYDIR	Require	 an empty directory for	the mount point	direc-
			tory.

       The flag	MNT_UPDATE indicates that the mount command is	being  applied
       to  an  already mounted file system.  This allows the mount flags to be
       changed without requiring that the file system  be  unmounted  and  re-
       mounted.	 Some file systems may not allow all flags to be changed.  For
       example,	 many  file systems will not allow a change from read-write to
       read-only.

       The flag	MNT_RELOAD causes the vfs subsystem to update its data	struc-
       tures pertaining	to the specified already mounted file system.

       The  type  argument  names  the file system.  The types of file systems
       known to	the system can be obtained with	lsvfs(1).

       The data	argument is a pointer to a structure that  contains  the  type
       specific	 arguments to mount.  The format for these argument structures
       is described in the manual page for each	file  system.	By  convention
       file  system manual pages are named by prefixing	``mount_'' to the name
       of the file system as returned by lsvfs(1).  Thus the NFS  file	system
       is  described by	the mount_nfs(8) manual	page.  It should be noted that
       a manual	page for default file systems, known as	UFS and	UFS2, does not
       exist.

       The unmount() system call disassociates the file	system from the	speci-
       fied mount point	dir.

       The flags argument may include MNT_FORCE	to specify that	the file  sys-
       tem  should  be forcibly	unmounted even if files	are still active.  Ac-
       tive special devices continue to	work, but any further accesses to  any
       other  active  files  result in errors even if the file system is later
       remounted.

       If the MNT_BYFSID flag is specified, dir	should instead be a file  sys-
       tem  ID	encoded	 as "FSID:val0:val1", where val0 and val1 are the con-
       tents of	the fsid_t val[] array in decimal.  The	file system  that  has
       the specified file system ID will be unmounted.

RETURN VALUES
       Upon  successful	 completion,  the  value  0 is returned; otherwise the
       value -1	is returned and	the global variable errno is set  to  indicate
       the error.

ERRORS
       The mount() and nmount()	system calls will fail when one	of the follow-
       ing occurs:

       [EPERM]		  The  caller  is neither the super-user nor the owner
			  of dir.

       [ENAMETOOLONG]	  A component of a pathname exceeded  255  characters,
			  or  the  entire  length of a path name exceeded 1023
			  characters.

       [ELOOP]		  Too many symbolic links were encountered  in	trans-
			  lating a pathname.

       [ENOENT]		  A component of dir does not exist.

       [ENOTDIR]	  A  component	of  name is not	a directory, or	a path
			  prefix of special is not a directory.

       [EBUSY]		  Another process currently holds a reference to dir.

       [EBUSY]		  The MNT_NOCOVER option was given, and	the  requested
			  mount	 point	is  already  the root of another mount
			  point.

       [EFAULT]		  The dir argument points outside the process's	 allo-
			  cated	address	space.

       [EIO]		  An  I/O  error  occurred  while  reading  data  from
			  special.

       [EINTEGRITY]	  The backing store  for  special  detected  corrupted
			  data while reading.

       The following errors can	occur for a ufs	file system mount:

       [ENODEV]		  A component of ufs_args fspec	does not exist.

       [ENOTBLK]	  The fspec argument is	not a block device.

       [ENOTEMPTY]	  The  MNT_EMPTYDIR  option was	specified, and the re-
			  quested mount	point is not an	empty directory.

       [ENXIO]		  The major device number of fspec  is	out  of	 range
			  (this	 indicates no device driver exists for the as-
			  sociated hardware).

       [EBUSY]		  fspec	is already mounted.

       [EMFILE]		  No space remains in the mount	table.

       [EINVAL]		  The super block for the file system had a bad	 magic
			  number or an out of range block size.

       [EINTEGRITY]	  The  super block for the file	system had a bad check
			  hash.	 The check hash	can usually  be	 corrected  by
			  running fsck(8).

       [ENOMEM]		  Not enough memory was	available to read the cylinder
			  group	information for	the file system.

       [EIO]		  An  I/O error	occurred while reading the super block
			  or cylinder group information.

       [EFAULT]		  The fspec argument points outside the	process's  al-
			  located address space.

       The following errors can	occur for a nfs	file system mount:

       [ETIMEDOUT]	  Nfs timed out	trying to contact the server.

       [EFAULT]		  Some	part  of the information described by nfs_args
			  points  outside  the	process's  allocated   address
			  space.

       The unmount() system call may fail with one of the following errors:

       [EPERM]		  The  caller  is  neither the super-user nor the user
			  who issued the corresponding mount() call.

       [ENAMETOOLONG]	  The length of	the path name  exceeded	 1023  charac-
			  ters.

       [EINVAL]		  The requested	directory is not in the	mount table.

       [ENOENT]		  The  file  system  ID	specified using	MNT_BYFSID was
			  not found in the mount table.

       [EINVAL]		  The file system ID specified using MNT_BYFSID	 could
			  not be decoded.

       [EINVAL]		  The specified	file system is the root	file system.

       [EBUSY]		  A  process  is holding a reference to	a file located
			  on the file system.

       [EIO]		  An I/O error occurred	while writing cached file sys-
			  tem information.

       [EFAULT]		  The dir argument points outside the process's	 allo-
			  cated	address	space.

SEE ALSO
       lsvfs(1), mksnap_ffs(8),	mount(8), umount(8)

HISTORY
       The  mount()  and  unmount() functions appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.
       The nmount() system call	first appeared in FreeBSD 5.0.

BUGS
       Some of the error codes need translation	to more	obvious	messages.

       Allowing	untrusted users	to mount arbitrary  media,  e.g.  by  enabling
       vfs.usermount,  should  not  be	considered safe.  Most file systems in
       FreeBSD were not	built to safeguard against malicious devices.

FreeBSD	13.2			March 30, 2020			      MOUNT(2)

NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUES | ERRORS | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | BUGS

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