SUMMARY: what's under a mounted filesystem?

From: Hap Hinrichs (gwh@ecliptic.stat.nielsen.com)
Date: Wed Nov 23 1994 - 05:44:15 CST


Ladies and Gentlemen:

A few days ago I asked:

> For about the third time in the last couple of days and sporadically
> before that it has been useful and important to find out what the
> structure under a mounted filesystem is. Of course it's not possible
> to unmount the filesystem to do that because it's in use. Is there
> any way to do this that works for any and all mounts including
> automounts? If it makes a difference this relates to SunOS 4.1.x

There are of course multiple ways to do this:

1) read the raw device and interpret the structure
2) boot -s and examine the structure before any mounts - I knew
        this but shutting down is seldom practical
3) use a dump | restore pipe to examine the structure since dump
        will do the underlying file system
4) export (if necessary) the underlying system and mount it
        somewhere; this has the advantage of being able to see the
        ownership and permissions

Thanks to the following for their rapid and accurate responses.

Ric Anderson <ric@Artisoft.COM>
raoul@MIT.EDU
vahsenr@css.ce.philips.nl (Rob Vahsen)
johnh@gerbil.umds.ac.uk (John Hearns - System Manager)
rad@getech.leeds.ac.uk
steve@cegelecproj.co.uk (Steve_Kilbane)
jpl@allegra.att.com (John P. Linderman)
Chip Christian <christian_chip@jpmorgan.com>
etnibsd!vsh@uunet.uu.net (Steve Harris)
Ian MacPhedran <Ian_MacPhedran@engr.usask.ca>
Dave Fetrow <fetrow@biostat.washington.edu>
perryh@pluto.rain.com (Perry Hutchison)
gdmr@dcs.ed.ac.uk
seeger@cis.ufl.edu (F. L. Charles Seeger III)

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