Mount --bind - like symlinks only better!

Oct 31, 2011 · 1 minute read
Category: linux

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If you use Linux on a regular basis, you’ll probably know just how useful a symlink is.

This makes things extremely annoying when a program refuses to work with them - treats them as a file or just refuses to work.

Enter: mount –bind

mount –bind is a special type of mount that will mount one directory as a child of another. Quite often this is used for simplifying partitioning or if a cpanel server runs out of disk space.

The general usage at the commandline is :- mount –bind olddir newdir

and in the fstab :- olddir newdir none defaults,bind 0 0

For instance, setting up a system where /home, /var and /opt share a partition and everything else is on another can be done like this in your fstab :- #root fs UUID=ebb8043d-6f1e-4a65-8d73-2c05f7ec213a / xfs defaults 0 1 #two tibibyte partition UUID=6210e43f-83a3-4001-83c7-40e3b1fb9c8e /twotib xfs defaults 0 2



Following binds

/twotib/home /home none defaults,bind 0 0 /twotib/opt /opt none defaults,bind 0 0 /twotib/var /var none defaults,bind 0 0