In order for certain programs to be able to determine where certain partitions are supposed to be mounted by default, the /etc/fstab file is used. Create a new file /etc/fstab containing the following: cat > /etc/fstab << "EOF" # Begin /etc/fstab # filesystem mount-point fs-type options dump fsck-order /dev/*LFS* / *fs-type* defaults 1 1 /dev/*swap* swap swap pri=1 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 shm /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 # End /etc/fstab EOF *LFS*, *swap* and *fs-type* have to be replaced with the appropriate values (/dev/hda2, /dev/hda5 and reiserfs for example). When adding a reiserfs partition, the 1 1 at the end of the line should be replaced with 0 0. A tmpfs mount is added at /dev/shm to comply with Posix shared memory requirements. For more information, see the file Documentation/filesystems/tmpfs.txt in the kernel source tree. For more information on the various fields which are in the fstab file, see man 5 fstab. There are other lines which you may consider adding to your fstab file. One example is the line which you must have if you are using devpts: devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=4,mode=620 0 0 Another example is a line to use if you intend to use USB devices: usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0 Both of these options will only work if you have the relevant support compiled into your kernel.