[buug] Re: /etc/[v]fstab & last field (fs_passno)

[Michael Paoli]

I presume by that you mean /etc/fstab on LINUX?  In any case, behavior
does vary someone depending upon *NIX flavor or LINUX distribution.
Red Hat / CentOS / Fedora are particularly stubborn about wanting to
check the filesystems if that last field isn't 0, and if any of the
checks fail (e.g. device isn't available, or filesystem type isn't
available at that point in the boot sequence), not only does it fail
and want a check, but it pretty much coerces one into rebooting - can't
just repair it or comment it out and proceed (at least not at all easily).
Many other LINUX distributions are a bit more "user"(/administrator) friendly
in that realm, ... at least allowing one options other than a forced reboot.
Behavior in the UNIX realm (and likely also BSD, etc.) tends to vary even
more.

Quoting Michael Cheselka <cheselka at gmail.com>:

> BTW, it's important to put a "0"( zero) in the last field otherwise you'll
> halt
> on startup when the drives are checked for fsck before mounting.  You'll
> see complaint's about not being able to mount drives anyway but no worry -
> you know the usb drive is not connected.  I'm sure there is an easy autofs
> way to do this as well, maybe even better.