Recently, I discovered you can mount partitions using systemd.mount by writinga mount unit file. In this blog post, we”ll talk about systemd.mount & how you can use it to mount partitions.

Systemd is gradually becoming the de facto init system & service manager replacing the old sysV init scripts & upstart. Recently, I discovered you can mount partitions using systemd.mount by writing your own .mount systemd unit file.

After RTFM’ing, I realized, under the hood, systemd just runs mount command to
mount the specified partition with the specified mount options listed in the
mount unit file. Basically, you need to specify the following options in your unit file:

• What= a partition name, path or UUID to mount
• Where= an absolute path of a directory i.e. path to a mount point. If the mount point is non-existent, it will be created
• Type= file system type. In most cases mount_command auto-detects the file

• Options= Mount options to use when mounting

In the end, you can convert your typical fstab entry such as this:

UUID=86fef3b2-bdc9-47fa-bbb1-4e528a89d222 /mnt/backups    ext4    defaults 0 0

to:

[Mount]
What=/dev/disk/by-uuid/86fef3b2-bdc9-47fa-bbb1-4e528a89d222
Where=/mnt/backups
Type=ext4
Options=defaults

So I wrote a simple systemd mount unit file — /etc/systemd/system/mnt-backups.mount — which didn’t work at first because I fell victim to one of the systemd.mount pitfalls:

Huh? Yes that’s right! The unit filename should match the mount point path.
mnt-backups.mount mount unit file:

[Unit]
Description=Mount System Backups Directory

[Mount]
What=/dev/disk/by-uuid/86fef3b2-bdc9-47fa-bbb1-4e528a89d222
Where=/mnt/backups
Type=ext4
Options=defaults

Reload systemd daemon & start the unit:

#!/bin/bash

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start mnt-backups.mount

And just like any other unit, you can view its status using systemctl status mnt-backups.mount:

Gotchas!!

After a reboot, I noticed the unit wasn’t started & as result the mount point dir. was empty. The unit file was missing an [Install] section which contains
installation information such as unit dependencies(WantedBy=, RequiredBy=),
aliases(Alias=), additional units(Also=), e.t.c for the specified unit. In this
case, I set the unit to start in multi-user runlevel a.k.a multi-user.target.
Oh, did you know you can change runlevel using systemctl isolate $RUN_LEVEL.target? Read_more about systemd runlevels/targets.

Here’s the complete /etc/systemd/system/mnt-backups.mount unit file with an [Install] section:

[Unit]
Description=Mount System Backups Directory

[Mount]
What=/dev/disk/by-uuid/86fef3b2-bdc9-47fa-bbb1-4e528a89d222
Where=/mnt/backups
Type=ext4
Options=defaults

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

As always, enable the unit to start automatically during boot.

#!/bin/bash

systemctl enable mnt-backups.mount

参考文献

Mounting Partitions Using Systemd
How you create a systemd .mount file for bind mounts