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NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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mount(2) System Calls Manual mount(2)
mount - mount filesystem
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
#include <sys/mount.h>
int mount(const char *source, const char *target,
const char *filesystemtype, unsigned long mountflags,
const void *_Nullable data);
mount() attaches the filesystem specified by source (which is
often a pathname referring to a device, but can also be the
pathname of a directory or file, or a dummy string) to the
location (a directory or file) specified by the pathname in
target.
Appropriate privilege (Linux: the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability) is
required to mount filesystems.
Values for the filesystemtype argument supported by the kernel are
listed in /proc/filesystems (e.g., "btrfs", "ext4", "jfs", "xfs",
"vfat", "fuse", "tmpfs", "cgroup", "proc", "mqueue", "nfs",
"cifs", "iso9660"). Further types may become available when the
appropriate modules are loaded.
The data argument is interpreted by the different filesystems.
Typically it is a string of comma-separated options understood by
this filesystem. See mount(8) for details of the options
available for each filesystem type. This argument may be
specified as NULL, if there are no options.
A call to mount() performs one of a number of general types of
operation, depending on the bits specified in mountflags. The
choice of which operation to perform is determined by testing the
bits set in mountflags, with the tests being conducted in the
order listed here:
• Remount an existing mount: mountflags includes MS_REMOUNT.
• Create a bind mount: mountflags includes MS_BIND.
• Change the propagation type of an existing mount: mountflags
includes one of MS_SHARED, MS_PRIVATE, MS_SLAVE, or
MS_UNBINDABLE.
• Move an existing mount to a new location: mountflags includes
MS_MOVE.
• Create a new mount: mountflags includes none of the above
flags.
Each of these operations is detailed later in this page. Further
flags may be specified in mountflags to modify the behavior of
mount(), as described below.
Additional mount flags
The list below describes the additional flags that can be
specified in mountflags. Note that some operation types ignore
some or all of these flags, as described later in this page.
MS_DIRSYNC (since Linux 2.5.19)
Make directory changes on this filesystem synchronous.
(This property can be obtained for individual directories
or subtrees using chattr(1).)
MS_LAZYTIME (since Linux 4.0)
Reduce on-disk updates of inode timestamps (atime, mtime,
ctime) by maintaining these changes only in memory. The
on-disk timestamps are updated only when:
• the inode needs to be updated for some change unrelated
to file timestamps;
• the application employs fsync(2), syncfs(2), or sync(2);
• an undeleted inode is evicted from memory; or
• more than 24 hours have passed since the inode was
written to disk.
This mount option significantly reduces writes needed to
update the inode's timestamps, especially mtime and atime.
However, in the event of a system crash, the atime and
mtime fields on disk might be out of date by up to 24
hours.
Examples of workloads where this option could be of
significant benefit include frequent random writes to
preallocated files, as well as cases where the
MS_STRICTATIME mount option is also enabled. (The
advantage of combining MS_STRICTATIME and MS_LAZYTIME is
that stat(2) will return the correctly updated atime, but
the atime updates will be flushed to disk only in the cases
listed above.)
MS_MANDLOCK
Permit mandatory locking on files in this filesystem.
(Mandatory locking must still be enabled on a per-file
basis, as described in fcntl(2).) Since Linux 4.5, this
mount option requires the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability and a
kernel configured with the CONFIG_MANDATORY_FILE_LOCKING
option. Mandatory locking has been fully deprecated in
Linux 5.15, so this flag should be considered deprecated.
MS_NOATIME
Do not update access times for (all types of) files on this
filesystem.
MS_NODEV
Do not allow access to devices (special files) on this
filesystem.
MS_NODIRATIME
Do not update access times for directories on this
filesystem. This flag provides a subset of the
functionality provided by MS_NOATIME; that is, MS_NOATIME
implies MS_NODIRATIME.
MS_NOEXEC
Do not allow programs to be executed from this filesystem.
MS_NOSUID
Do not honor set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits or file
capabilities when executing programs from this filesystem.
In addition, SELinux domain transitions require the
permission nosuid_transition, which in turn needs also the
policy capability nnp_nosuid_transition.
MS_RDONLY
Mount filesystem read-only.
MS_REC (since Linux 2.4.11)
Used in conjunction with MS_BIND to create a recursive bind
mount, and in conjunction with the propagation type flags
to recursively change the propagation type of all of the
mounts in a subtree. See below for further details.
MS_RELATIME (since Linux 2.6.20)
When a file on this filesystem is accessed, update the
file's last access time (atime) only if the current value
of atime is less than or equal to the file's last
modification time (mtime) or last status change time
(ctime). This option is useful for programs, such as
mutt(1), that need to know when a file has been read since
it was last modified. Since Linux 2.6.30, the kernel
defaults to the behavior provided by this flag (unless
MS_NOATIME was specified), and the MS_STRICTATIME flag is
required to obtain traditional semantics. In addition,
since Linux 2.6.30, the file's last access time is always
updated if it is more than 1 day old.
MS_SILENT (since Linux 2.6.17)
Suppress the display of certain (printk()) warning messages
in the kernel log. This flag supersedes the misnamed and
obsolete MS_VERBOSE flag (available since Linux 2.4.12),
which has the same meaning.
MS_STRICTATIME (since Linux 2.6.30)
Always update the last access time (atime) when files on
this filesystem are accessed. (This was the default
behavior before Linux 2.6.30.) Specifying this flag
overrides the effect of setting the MS_NOATIME and
MS_RELATIME flags.
MS_SYNCHRONOUS
Make writes on this filesystem synchronous (as though the
O_SYNC flag to open(2) was specified for all file opens to
this filesystem).
MS_NOSYMFOLLOW (since Linux 5.10)
Do not follow symbolic links when resolving paths.
Symbolic links can still be created, and readlink(1),
readlink(2), realpath(1), and realpath(3) all still work
properly.
From Linux 2.4 onward, some of the above flags are settable on a
per-mount basis, while others apply to the superblock of the
mounted filesystem, meaning that all mounts of the same filesystem
share those flags. (Previously, all of the flags were per-
superblock.)
The per-mount-point flags are as follows:
• Since Linux 2.4: MS_NODEV, MS_NOEXEC, and MS_NOSUID flags are
settable on a per-mount-point basis.
• Additionally, since Linux 2.6.16: MS_NOATIME and MS_NODIRATIME.
• Additionally, since Linux 2.6.20: MS_RELATIME.
The following flags are per-superblock: MS_DIRSYNC, MS_LAZYTIME,
MS_MANDLOCK, MS_SILENT, and MS_SYNCHRONOUS. The initial settings
of these flags are determined on the first mount of the
filesystem, and will be shared by all subsequent mounts of the
same filesystem. Subsequently, the settings of the flags can be
changed via a remount operation (see below). Such changes will be
visible via all mounts associated with the filesystem.
Since Linux 2.6.16, MS_RDONLY can be set or cleared on a per-
mount-point basis as well as on the underlying filesystem
superblock. The mounted filesystem will be writable only if
neither the filesystem nor the mountpoint are flagged as read-
only.
Remounting an existing mount
An existing mount may be remounted by specifying MS_REMOUNT in
mountflags. This allows you to change the mountflags and data of
an existing mount without having to unmount and remount the
filesystem. target should be the same value specified in the
initial mount() call.
The source and filesystemtype arguments are ignored.
The mountflags and data arguments should match the values used in
the original mount() call, except for those parameters that are
being deliberately changed.
The following mountflags can be changed: MS_LAZYTIME, MS_MANDLOCK,
MS_NOATIME, MS_NODEV, MS_NODIRATIME, MS_NOEXEC, MS_NOSUID,
MS_RELATIME, MS_RDONLY, MS_STRICTATIME (whose effect is to clear
the MS_NOATIME and MS_RELATIME flags), and MS_SYNCHRONOUS.
Attempts to change the setting of the MS_DIRSYNC and MS_SILENT
flags during a remount are silently ignored. Note that changes to
per-superblock flags are visible via all mounts of the associated
filesystem (because the per-superblock flags are shared by all
mounts).
Since Linux 3.17, if none of MS_NOATIME, MS_NODIRATIME,
MS_RELATIME, or MS_STRICTATIME is specified in mountflags, then
the remount operation preserves the existing values of these flags
(rather than defaulting to MS_RELATIME).
Since Linux 2.6.26, the MS_REMOUNT flag can be used with MS_BIND
to modify only the per-mount-point flags. This is particularly
useful for setting or clearing the "read-only" flag on a mount
without changing the underlying filesystem. Specifying mountflags
as:
MS_REMOUNT | MS_BIND | MS_RDONLY
will make access through this mountpoint read-only, without
affecting other mounts.
Creating a bind mount
If mountflags includes MS_BIND (available since Linux 2.4), then
perform a bind mount. A bind mount makes a file or a directory
subtree visible at another point within the single directory
hierarchy. Bind mounts may cross filesystem boundaries and span
chroot(2) jails.
The filesystemtype and data arguments are ignored.
The remaining bits (other than MS_REC, described below) in the
mountflags argument are also ignored. (The bind mount has the
same mount options as the underlying mount.) However, see the
discussion of remounting above, for a method of making an existing
bind mount read-only.
By default, when a directory is bind mounted, only that directory
is mounted; if there are any submounts under the directory tree,
they are not bind mounted. If the MS_REC flag is also specified,
then a recursive bind mount operation is performed: all submounts
under the source subtree (other than unbindable mounts) are also
bind mounted at the corresponding location in the target subtree.
Changing the propagation type of an existing mount
If mountflags includes one of MS_SHARED, MS_PRIVATE, MS_SLAVE, or
MS_UNBINDABLE (all available since Linux 2.6.15), then the
propagation type of an existing mount is changed. If more than
one of these flags is specified, an error results.
The only other flags that can be specified while changing the
propagation type are MS_REC (described below) and MS_SILENT (which
is ignored).
The source, filesystemtype, and data arguments are ignored.
The meanings of the propagation type flags are as follows:
MS_SHARED
Make this mount shared. Mount and unmount events
immediately under this mount will propagate to the other
mounts that are members of this mount's peer group.
Propagation here means that the same mount or unmount will
automatically occur under all of the other mounts in the
peer group. Conversely, mount and unmount events that take
place under peer mounts will propagate to this mount.
MS_PRIVATE
Make this mount private. Mount and unmount events do not
propagate into or out of this mount.
MS_SLAVE
If this is a shared mount that is a member of a peer group
that contains other members, convert it to a slave mount.
If this is a shared mount that is a member of a peer group
that contains no other members, convert it to a private
mount. Otherwise, the propagation type of the mount is
left unchanged.
When a mount is a slave, mount and unmount events propagate
into this mount from the (master) shared peer group of
which it was formerly a member. Mount and unmount events
under this mount do not propagate to any peer.
A mount can be the slave of another peer group while at the
same time sharing mount and unmount events with a peer
group of which it is a member.
MS_UNBINDABLE
Make this mount unbindable. This is like a private mount,
and in addition this mount can't be bind mounted. When a
recursive bind mount (mount() with the MS_BIND and MS_REC
flags) is performed on a directory subtree, any unbindable
mounts within the subtree are automatically pruned (i.e.,
not replicated) when replicating that subtree to produce
the target subtree.
By default, changing the propagation type affects only the target
mount. If the MS_REC flag is also specified in mountflags, then
the propagation type of all mounts under target is also changed.
For further details regarding mount propagation types (including
the default propagation type assigned to new mounts), see
mount_namespaces(7).
Moving a mount
If mountflags contains the flag MS_MOVE (available since Linux
2.4.18), then move a subtree: source specifies an existing mount
and target specifies the new location to which that mount is to be
relocated. The move is atomic: at no point is the subtree
unmounted.
The remaining bits in the mountflags argument are ignored, as are
the filesystemtype and data arguments.
Creating a new mount
If none of MS_REMOUNT, MS_BIND, MS_MOVE, MS_SHARED, MS_PRIVATE,
MS_SLAVE, or MS_UNBINDABLE is specified in mountflags, then
mount() performs its default action: creating a new mount. source
specifies the source for the new mount, and target specifies the
directory at which to create the mount point.
The filesystemtype and data arguments are employed, and further
bits may be specified in mountflags to modify the behavior of the
call.
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno
is set to indicate the error.
The error values given below result from filesystem type
independent errors. Each filesystem type may have its own special
errors and its own special behavior. See the Linux kernel source
code for details.
EACCES A component of a path was not searchable. (See also
path_resolution(7).)
EACCES Mounting a read-only filesystem was attempted without
giving the MS_RDONLY flag.
The filesystem may be read-only for various reasons,
including: it resides on a read-only optical disk; it is
resides on a device with a physical switch that has been
set to mark the device read-only; the filesystem
implementation was compiled with read-only support; or
errors were detected when initially mounting the
filesystem, so that it was marked read-only and can't be
remounted as read-write (until the errors are fixed).
Some filesystems instead return the error EROFS on an
attempt to mount a read-only filesystem.
EACCES The block device source is located on a filesystem mounted
with the MS_NODEV option.
EBUSY An attempt was made to stack a new mount directly on top of
an existing mount point that was created in this mount
namespace with the same source and target.
EBUSY source cannot be remounted read-only, because it still
holds files open for writing.
EFAULT One of the pointer arguments points outside the user
address space.
EINVAL source had an invalid superblock.
EINVAL A remount operation (MS_REMOUNT) was attempted, but source
was not already mounted on target.
EINVAL A move operation (MS_MOVE) was attempted, but the mount
tree under source includes unbindable mounts and target is
a mount that has propagation type MS_SHARED.
EINVAL A move operation (MS_MOVE) was attempted, but the parent
mount of source mount has propagation type MS_SHARED.
EINVAL A move operation (MS_MOVE) was attempted, but source was
not a mount, or was '/'.
EINVAL A bind operation (MS_BIND) was requested where source
referred a mount namespace magic link (i.e., a
/proc/pid/ns/mnt magic link or a bind mount to such a link)
and the propagation type of the parent mount of target was
MS_SHARED, but propagation of the requested bind mount
could lead to a circular dependency that might prevent the
mount namespace from ever being freed.
EINVAL mountflags includes more than one of MS_SHARED, MS_PRIVATE,
MS_SLAVE, or MS_UNBINDABLE.
EINVAL mountflags includes MS_SHARED, MS_PRIVATE, MS_SLAVE, or
MS_UNBINDABLE and also includes a flag other than MS_REC or
MS_SILENT.
EINVAL An attempt was made to bind mount an unbindable mount.
EINVAL In an unprivileged mount namespace (i.e., a mount namespace
owned by a user namespace that was created by an
unprivileged user), a bind mount operation (MS_BIND) was
attempted without specifying (MS_REC), which would have
revealed the filesystem tree underneath one of the
submounts of the directory being bound.
ELOOP Too many links encountered during pathname resolution.
ELOOP A move operation was attempted, and target is a descendant
of source.
EMFILE (In case no block device is required:) Table of dummy
devices is full.
ENAMETOOLONG
A pathname was longer than MAXPATHLEN.
ENODEV filesystemtype not configured in the kernel.
ENOENT A pathname was empty or had a nonexistent component.
ENOMEM The kernel could not allocate a free page to copy filenames
or data into.
ENOTBLK
source is not a block device (and a device was required).
ENOTDIR
target, or a prefix of source, is not a directory.
ENXIO The major number of the block device source is out of
range.
EPERM The caller does not have the required privileges.
EPERM An attempt was made to modify (MS_REMOUNT) the MS_RDONLY,
MS_NOSUID, or MS_NOEXEC flag, or one of the "atime" flags
(MS_NOATIME, MS_NODIRATIME, MS_RELATIME) of an existing
mount, but the mount is locked; see mount_namespaces(7).
EROFS Mounting a read-only filesystem was attempted without
giving the MS_RDONLY flag. See EACCES, above.
Linux.
The definitions of MS_DIRSYNC, MS_MOVE, MS_PRIVATE, MS_REC,
MS_RELATIME, MS_SHARED, MS_SLAVE, MS_STRICTATIME, and
MS_UNBINDABLE were added to glibc headers in glibc 2.12.
Since Linux 2.4 a single filesystem can be mounted at multiple
mount points, and multiple mounts can be stacked on the same mount
point.
The mountflags argument may have the magic number 0xC0ED
(MS_MGC_VAL) in the top 16 bits. (All of the other flags
discussed in DESCRIPTION occupy the low order 16 bits of
mountflags.) Specifying MS_MGC_VAL was required before Linux 2.4,
but since Linux 2.4 is no longer required and is ignored if
specified.
The original MS_SYNC flag was renamed MS_SYNCHRONOUS in 1.1.69
when a different MS_SYNC was added to <mman.h>.
Before Linux 2.4 an attempt to execute a set-user-ID or set-group-
ID program on a filesystem mounted with MS_NOSUID would fail with
EPERM. Since Linux 2.4 the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are
just silently ignored in this case.
Mount namespaces
Starting with Linux 2.4.19, Linux provides mount namespaces. A
mount namespace is the set of filesystem mounts that are visible
to a process. Mount namespaces can be (and usually are) shared
between multiple processes, and changes to the namespace (i.e.,
mounts and unmounts) by one process are visible to all other
processes sharing the same namespace. (The pre-2.4.19 Linux
situation can be considered as one in which a single namespace was
shared by every process on the system.)
A child process created by fork(2) shares its parent's mount
namespace; the mount namespace is preserved across an execve(2).
A process can obtain a private mount namespace if: it was created
using the clone(2) CLONE_NEWNS flag, in which case its new
namespace is initialized to be a copy of the namespace of the
process that called clone(2); or it calls unshare(2) with the
CLONE_NEWNS flag, which causes the caller's mount namespace to
obtain a private copy of the namespace that it was previously
sharing with other processes, so that future mounts and unmounts
by the caller are invisible to other processes (except child
processes that the caller subsequently creates) and vice versa.
For further details on mount namespaces, see mount_namespaces(7).
Parental relationship between mounts
Each mount has a parent mount. The overall parental relationship
of all mounts defines the single directory hierarchy seen by the
processes within a mount namespace.
The parent of a new mount is defined when the mount is created.
In the usual case, the parent of a new mount is the mount of the
filesystem containing the directory or file at which the new mount
is attached. In the case where a new mount is stacked on top of
an existing mount, the parent of the new mount is the previous
mount that was stacked at that location.
The parental relationship between mounts can be discovered via the
/proc/pid/mountinfo file (see below).
[1m/proc/[24mpid/mounts and /proc/pid/mountinfo
The Linux-specific /proc/pid/mounts file exposes the list of
mounts in the mount namespace of the process with the specified
ID. The /proc/pid/mountinfo file exposes even more information
about mounts, including the propagation type and mount ID
information that makes it possible to discover the parental
relationship between mounts. See proc(5) and mount_namespaces(7)
for details of this file.
mountpoint(1), chroot(2), FS_IOC_SETFLAGS(2const),
mount_setattr(2), pivot_root(2), umount(2), mount_namespaces(7),
path_resolution(7), findmnt(8), lsblk(8), mount(8), umount(8)
This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
user-space interface documentation) project. Information about
the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz
fetched from
⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
2025-08-11. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-
to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not
part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
Linux man-pages 6.15 2025-05-17 mount(2)
Pages that refer to this page: access(2), execve(2), fcntl_locking(2), FS_IOC_SETFLAGS(2const), mkdir(2), mknod(2), mount_setattr(2), open(2), pivot_root(2), seccomp_unotify(2), statfs(2), syscalls(2), umount(2), statvfs(3), filesystems(5), proc_pid_mountinfo(5), systemd.exec(5), capabilities(7), cgroups(7), inode(7), mount_namespaces(7), namespaces(7), user_namespaces(7), mount(8)
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