/etc/fstab

Index /etc/fstab INFO
/etc/fstab contains information of where your partitions and storage devices should be mounted and how.

/dev/hda2	/	ext2	defaults	1	1	The first column contains the device name,
/dev/hdb1	/home	ext2	defaults	1	2	The second one its mount point,
/dev/cdrom	/media/cdrom	auto	ro,noauto,user,exec	0	0	Third its file system type,
/dev/fd0	/media/floppy	auto	rw,noauto,user,sync	0	0	Fourth the mount options,
proc	/proc	proc	defaults	0	0	Fifth (a number) dump options,
/dev/hda1	swap	swap	pri=42	0	0	Sixth (another number) file system check options.

ext2, ext3 and ext4	Linux partitions
reiserfs	Journaled Linux partitions
swap	Swap partitions
vfat and ntfs	Windows partitions
auto	Detected automatically

The first and second columns tell the mount command the device or partition, and what is the mount point.
The mount point specified for a device in /etc/fstab is its default mount point.
That is the directory where the device will be mounted if you don't specify any other mount point when mounting the device.

The third column specifies the file system type of the device or partition.

The fourth column lists all the mount options for the device or partition.

The 5th column in /etc/fstab is the dump option. Dump checks it and uses the number to decide if a file system should be backed up. If it's zero, dump will ignore that file system.

The 6th column is a fsck option. fsck looks at the number in the 6th column to determine in which order the file systems should be checked. If it's zero, fsck won't check the file system.

auto / noauto With the auto option, the device will be mounted automatically.
user / nouser The user option allows normal users to mount the device, whereas nouser lets only the root to mount the device.
exec / noexec exec lets you execute binaries that are on that partition, whereas noexec doesn't let you do that.
ro Mount the file system read-only.
rw Mount the file system read-write.
sync / async How the input and output to the file system should be done. sync means it's done synchronously, the changes are physically written to the disk at the same time you issue the copy command.
defaults Uses the default options that are rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, and async.

auto / noauto	With the auto option, the device will be mounted automatically.
user / nouser	The user option allows normal users to mount the device, whereas nouser lets only the root to mount the device.
exec / noexec	exec lets you execute binaries that are on that partition, whereas noexec doesn't let you do that.
ro	Mount the file system read-only.
rw	Mount the file system read-write.
sync / async	How the input and output to the file system should be done. sync means it's done synchronously, the changes are physically written to the disk at the same time you issue the copy command.
defaults	Uses the default options that are rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, and async.