Hello

Apple has done some different things with /etc/fstab , what follows is
from 110.4 Tiger::

> > The only option you probably have is to prevent automatic mounting of
> > the partition itself by the Finder. Usually it is accomplished by
> > editing the fstab table. Note, though anyone who knows that the
> > partition exists could mount it.

In Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) /etc/fstab.hd is present but contains this note:

"IGNORE THIS FILE.
This file does nothing, contains no useful data, and might go away in
future releases. Do not depend on this file or its contents."

It looks like mounting partitions and disks is almost solely the job
of the Finder., wwhich mounts them from /Volumes which is at the root
of the file system..

df gives this output

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s3 56G 46G 9.5G 63% /
devfs 113K 113K 0B 100% /dev
fdesc 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev
<volfs> 512K 512K 0B 100% /.vol
automount -nsl [139] 0B 0B 0B 100% /Network
automount -fstab [150] 0B 0B 0B 100% /automount/Servers
automount -static [150] 0B 0B 0B 100% /automount/static
/dev/disk6s3 37G 36G 1.3G 96% /Volumes/PocketDrive
/dev/disk4 659M 659M 0B 100% /Volumes/Audio CD

>
> I'm not sure that that's the case. In 'standard' Unices, only root
> can mount disks. For end-user systems like desktop OS X, desktop
> Linux, and such, removable media is typically set up to be
> auto-mounting. But that wouldn't apply to hard disk partitions.

Linux systems are implementing user mounted disks like CD's and DVD's
by adding a CD group, members of that group can mount cd's.. Of course
other *nix systems do not have an independent program or daemon like
the Apple Finder to mount systems..

Even Finder mounted file systems maybe locked and require a password
to allow editing or writing. A disk can be locked by Control-Cliick
--> get info scroll down to "ownership and permissions" next to the
owner's name is a lock icon.. A locked disk cannot be changed until
the lock is opened. This is not a standard **nix feature, I believe
it is over and above the usual permissions. Someone else may be able
to explain this in more detail from the point of view of the HFS+
file system Apple uses.

So there is a great deal of difference between Mac OS X /Darwin and
other *nix OS's

cheers,
David

--
David Fedoruk
"Music is enough for one's life time, but one life time is not enough
for music" Sergei Rachmaninov

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