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Skalman65
Asked: 2019-03-14 22:27:51 +0800 CST

Does the order in which devices are listed in fstab matter?

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All the information I find about the fstab file shows that the units are listed chronologically.

sda1
sda2
sdb1
etc...

My fstab file is listed as follows:

sda2 (root)
sda1 (efi)
sda3 (swap)

Computer works, but starts a little slow, it takes a long time to connect sda2.

Therefore, I wonder how the devices are listed in the fstab file has some significance

fstab mount

1 Answers

  1. From man fstab (Lubuntu 19.04):

    fstab - static information about the filesystems

The  file  fstab  contains  descriptive  information  about the filesystems the system can
mount.  fstab is only read by programs, and not written; it is  the  duty  of  the  system
administrator to properly create and maintain this file.  The order of records in fstab is
important because fsck(8), mount(8), and  umount(8)  sequentially  iterate  through  fstab
doing their thing.

    If you had a separate /home (or other directory) partition, it'd be mounted on-top of /, so of course / should be listed first. This can be taken advantage of, though usually not with default fstab mounts.

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