/etc/mtab & /proc/mounts --- please help

[santanudas]

Hi all,

I got a problem and a n urgent fix. Here is my situation one:

I got /var (/dev/hda6) totally filled up so I decided to switch that one with /home (/dev/hda8) as I got plenty of spaces left over there. To do that I edited the /etc/mtab file and switched the entry for /var with /home so that the new entry points the /dev/had8 to /var and /dev/hda6 to /home. But after the reboot, I found /etc/mtab had switched back to its original. /proc/mounts, which is actually a symbolic link to /proc/self/mounts whilst /proc/self is link to pid, contains the same information as /etc/mtab but editing /proc/self/mounts is not permissible. My /etc/mtab is not linked to /proc/mounts.

Any one out here faced this type of problem before? Or can any one please help me?
Thanks to all you guys in advance!!!!

 

[marsd]

Your changes go in /etc/fstab.

 

[santanudas]

Sorry, I actually didn't get what you mean to say. My understanding was fstab now just a reference file. My fstab is something like this:

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/usr /usr ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/var /var ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/tmp /tmp ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0

Should I change any thing here?
Thanks for replying.

 

[ericbrunson]

You define your mounts in /etc/fstab. mtab and /proc/mounts are for the OS to keep track of what's mounted and if you change them you can screw up your system.

 

[santanudas]

Well, I wanted to know what should I change in /etc/fstab.

I though, maybe it's a good idea to use LABEL= rather than specify the actual device file in /etc/fstab to makes it possible to move disks around on IDE/SCSI buses without having changed configuration files like aforementioned, grub.conf etc. But I may be wrong.

 

[santanudas]

hi, I got a way out now. You don't really ned to do any thing directly with this new type of /etc/fstab, which uses LABEL rather than actual device name. There is tool, named e2lable to change (or asign a new one) the name of the lable associated with the actual device.

Many thanks to all for replying.