Linux manual pages Section 3  

Name

getmntent, setmntent, addmntent, endmntent, hasmntopt, getmntent_r — get file system descriptor file entry

Synopsis

#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 */
#include <mntent.h>
struct mntent *getmntent_r( FILE *fp,
  struct mntent *mntbuf,
  char *buf,
  int buflen);
 
[Note] Note
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
getmntent_r():
_BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE

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 filename 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 nonreentrant functions are from SunOS 4.1.3. A routine getmntent_r() was introduced in HP-UX 10, but it returns an int. The prototype shown above is glibc-only.

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().

SEE ALSO

fopen(3), fstab(5), mount(8)

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.24 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.


  Copyright 1993 David Metcalfe (davidprism.demon.co.uk)

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
permission notice identical to this one.

Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.  The author(s) assume no
responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
the use of the information contained herein.  The author(s) may not
have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
professionally.

Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.

References consulted:
    Linux libc source code
    Lewine's _POSIX Programmer's Guide_ (O'Reilly & Associates, 1991)
    386BSD man pages
Modified Sat Jul 24 21:46:57 1993 by Rik Faith (faithcs.unc.edu)
Modified 961109, 031115, aeb