%general-entities; ]> /etc/fstab The /etc/fstab file is used by some programs to determine where file systems are to be mounted by default, which must be checked, and in which order. Create a new file systems table like this: cat > /etc/fstab << "EOF" # Begin /etc/fstab # file system mount-point type options dump fsck # order /dev/[xxx] / [fff] defaults 1 1 /dev/[yyy] swap swap pri=1 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=4,mode=620 0 0 shm /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 # End /etc/fstab EOF Replace [xxx], [yyy], and [fff] with the values appropriate for the system, for example, hda2, hda5, and ext2. For details on the six fields in this file, see man 5 fstab. When using a journalling file system, the 1 1 at the end of the line should be replaced with 0 0 because such a partition does not need to be dumped or checked. The /dev/shm mount point for tmpfs is included to allow enabling POSIX-shared memory. The kernel must have the required support built into it for this to work (more about this is in the next section). Please note that very little software currently uses POSIX-shared memory. Therefore, consider the /dev/shm mount point optional. For more information, see Documentation/filesystems/tmpfs.txt in the kernel source tree. There are other lines which may be added to the /etc/fstab file. One example is a line for USB devices: usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=14,devmode=0660 0 0 This option will only work if Support for Host-side USB and USB device filesystem are compiled into the kernel (not as a module).