How to Mount at Boot Time

If you want to mount file systems at boot time instead of using autofs maps, follow this procedure. Although you must follow this procedure for all local file systems, it is not recommended for remote file systems because it must be completed on every client.

Edit the /etc/vfstab file.

Entries in the /etc/vfstab file have the following syntax:

special  fsckdev  mountp  fstype  fsckpass  mount-at-boot  mntopts

Example of a vfstab entry

You want a client computer to mount the /var/mail directory from the server wasp. You would like the file system to be mounted as /var/mail on the client and you want the client to have read-write access. Add the following entry to the client's vfstab file.

wasp:/var/mail - /var/mail nfs - yes rw

NFS servers should not have NFS vfstab entries because of a potential deadlock. The NFS service is started after the entries in /etc/vfstab are checked, so that if two servers that are mounting file systems from each other fail at the same time, each system could hang as the systems reboot.