mntent

NAME
     mntent -- static information on a file system


SYNOPSIS
     #include ><mntent.h>


DESCRIPTION
     The  /etc/fstab  file  holds information about a file system
     used by the local machine,  and  the  /etc/mtab  file  holds
     information  on the file system mounted. These files consist
     of lines having the following form.

        file-system mount-point FS-type options freq passno

     For example, a line may be specified as follows:

        /dev/dsk/05 >/work >SFS >rw >0 >0

     Fields are separated by blanks, A tab nonblank  character  #
     specified  at  the  beginning  indicates that the subsequent
     character string is treated as a comment.

     Entries in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab can be accessed by getmn-
     tent(3X). A structure with the following form is returned.


     struct >mntent{
          char   *mnt_>fsname;      /* >filesystem >name >*/
          char   *mnt_>dir;         /* >filesystem >path >prefix >*/
          char   *mnt_>type;        /*  SFS,  NFS, >swap, >or >ignore
                                   */
          char   *mnt_>opts;        /*   rw,   ro,   hard,   soft,
                                   userquota, >groupquota, >noauto,
                                   etc. >*/
          int    mnt_>freq;         /* >dump >frequency, >in >days >*/
          int    mnt_>passno;       /*  pass  number  on  parallel
                                   fsck >*/
     };

     The  mnt_type  field  determines  the interpretations of the
     mnt_fsname and mnt_opts  fields.  The  following  lists  the
     interpretations  of these fields for each of the file system
     types currently supported:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <mntent.h>

FILE *setmntent(const char *filename, const char *type);

struct mntent *getmntent(FILE *fp);

int addmntent(FILE *fp, const struct mntent *mnt);

int endmntent(FILE *fp);

char *hasmntopt(const struct mntent *mnt, const char *opt);

/* GNU extension */
#define _GNU_SOURCE    /* or _SVID_SOURCE or _BSD_SOURCE */
#include <mntent.h>

struct mntent *getmntent_r(FILE *fp, struct mntent *mntbuf,
                           char *buf, int buflen);

DESCRIPTION 

These routines are used to access the file system description file /etc/fstab and the mounted file system description file /etc/mtab.

The setmntent() function opens the file system description file fp and returns a file pointer which can be used by getmntent(). The argument type is the type of access required and can take the same values as the mode argument of fopen(3).

The getmntent() function reads the next line from the file system description file fp and returns a pointer to a structure containing the broken out fields from a line in the file. The pointer points to a static area of memory which is overwritten by subsequent calls to getmntent().

The addmntent() function adds the mntent structure mnt to the end of the open file fp.

The endmntent() function closes the file system description file fp.

The hasmntopt() function scans the mnt_opts field (see below) of the mntent structure mnt for a substring that matches opt. See <mntent.h> and mount(8) for valid mount options.

The reentrant getmntent_r() function is similar to getmntent(), but stores the struct mount in the provided *mntbuf and stores the strings pointed to by the entries in that struct in the provided array buf of size buflen.

The mntent structure is defined in <mntent.h> as follows:

struct mntent {
        char    *mnt_fsname;    /* name of mounted file system */
        char    *mnt_dir;       /* file system path prefix */
        char    *mnt_type;      /* mount type (see mntent.h) */
        char    *mnt_opts;      /* mount options (see mntent.h) */
        int     mnt_freq;       /* dump frequency in days */
        int     mnt_passno;     /* pass number on parallel fsck */
};

Since fields in the mtab and fstab files are separated by whitespace, octal escapes are used to represent the four characters space (/040), tab (/011), newline (/012) and backslash (/134) in those files when they occur in one of the four strings in a mntent structure. The routines addmntent() and getmntent() will convert from string representation to escaped representation and back.

RETURN VALUE 

The getmntent() and getmntent_r() functions return a pointer to the mntent structure or NULL on failure.

The addmntent() function returns 0 on success and 1 on failure.

The endmntent() function always returns 1.

The hasmntopt() function returns the address of the substring if a match is found and NULL otherwise.

FILES 

/etc/fstab file system description file /etc/mtab mounted file system description file

CONFORMING TO 

The non-reentrant functions are from SunOS 4.1.3. A routine getmntent_r() was introduced in HPUX 10, but it returns an int. The prototype shown above is glibc-only. LSB deprecates the functions endhostent(), sethostent() and setmntent().

NOTES 

System V also has a getmntent() function but the calling sequence differs, and the returned structure is different. Under System V /etc/mnttab is used. 4.4BSD and Digital Unix have a routine getmntinfo(), a wrapper around the system call getfsstat().