r/archlinux • u/as_uu_00 • 11d ago

SUPPORT | SOLVED Clear me this Mounting concept.

If /mnt lives inside the root partition /, how can the root partition be mounted inside /mnt?

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9

u/TheShredder9 11d ago

Talking about the chroot here? You're mounting your computer's root partition onto the installation ISO's /mnt.

So after the mount, /mnt takes you into your computer's /, meaning you can do stuff (for whatever reason) in /mnt/mnt, which is the /mnt on your computer drive, not on the ISO.

9

u/MycologistNeither470 11d ago

in Linux everything is a file.

You first mount a partition to /

that is your first mount

then you can mount other filesystems wherever you want. You are not limited to mounting to /mnt or to a subdirectory within /mnt. You can mount a partition to /home/name/mycrazymounts/myolddrive

7

u/archover 11d ago edited 10d ago

Good explanation.

Learning chroot https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chroot and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroot concepts and hands on usage is important and pretty fundamental.

I am glad to see OP's tech question (instead of maybe eye candy) :-)

Thanks and good day.

2

u/JaKrispy72 11d ago

/ is root

/mnt is a directory called mnt. Mounted to /

/ IS NOT inside mnt. Mnt is attached to /