fstab Permission Masks Explained

http://www.omaroid.com/fstab-permission-masks-explained/
The fstab masks has puzzled me a little, because its not as the unix file permissions, so
I thought to share the result of my research for anyone who felt the same.
The fstab exists in /etc/fstab, so lets examine the fstab a little bit.
The fstab has got 6 columns:
Device name: This is the UNIX filename representing the physical device or partition.
Typically, this name starts with /dev.
Mount point: File system type
File system type: This field represents the filesystem to be used when mounting the
device or partition. Typical values for this field are ext2, ext3, reiserfs, vfat, iso9660,
and udf. auto can be used if multiple filesystems can be used on removable devices such
as card readers, CD-ROMs, and DVD-ROMs.
Options: These are options given to the mount, umount and eject commands. A value
of defaults means to use the default options for the filesystem being used. users
means that any user can mount the device. owner means that only the owner of the
device can mount and unmount the device. Usually this is the administrator. rw means to
mount the device for read and write access. ro means the device is mounted for readonly access. There are quite a few other options that can be placed in this field.
Dump: This is usually set to zero for removable devices.
Boot Check Priority(Pass): When set to zero, this tells Linux not to do a filesystem
integrity check on this device at boot time. The boot should have value 1, if set to 2 will
be checked after the boot, and 0 will not check. Enabling this option for removable
devices is not recommended.
Heres an example:
# device name
LABEL=/
/dev/hda6
None
None
None

mount point
/
swap
/dev/pts
/proc
/dev/shm

fs-type
ext3
swap
devpts
proc
tmpfs

options
defaults
defaults
gid=5,mode=620
defaults
defaults

dump-freq
1
0
0
0
0

pass-num
1
0
0
0
0

# Removable media
/dev/cdrom
/mount/cdrom
/dev/fd0
/mount/floppy

udf,iso9660
auto

noauto,owner,kudzu,ro
noauto,owner,kudzu

0
0

0
0

# NTFS Windows XP partition

/dev/hda1
/mnt/WinXP

ntfs-3g

quiet,defaults,locale=en_US.utf8,umask=000

0 0

# Partition shared by Windows and Linux

/dev/hda7
/mnt/shared
vfat

auto,dmask=000

# mounting tmpfs
Tmpfs
/mnt/tmpfschk

tmpfs

size=100m

# mounting cifs
//pingu/ashare

cifs

credentials=/root/smbpass.txt 0 0

/store/pingu

#mounting NFS
pingu:/store

/store

nfs

rw

fstab Options

sync/async All I/O to the file system should be done (a)synchronously.

auto The filesystem can be mounted automatically (at bootup, or when mount
is passed the -a option). This is really unnecessary as this is the default action of
mount -a anyway.

noauto The filesystem will NOT be automatically mounted at startup, or when

mount passed -a. You must explicitly mount the filesystem.

dev/nodev Interpret/Do not interpret character or block special devices on the

file system.

exec / noexec Permit/Prevent the execution of binaries from the filesystem.

suid/nosuid Permit/Block the operation of suid, and sgid bits.

ro Mount read-only.

rw Mount read-write.

user Permit any user to mount the filesystem. This automatically implies
noexec, nosuid,nodev unless overridden.

nouser Only permit root to mount the filesystem. This is also a default setting.

defaults Use default settings. Equivalent to rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser,
async.

_netdev Used for network shares (nfs, samba, sshfs, etc), mounting the
network share is delayed until after the boot process brings up the network
(otherwise the mount will fail as the network is not up).

Fstab Mask Permissions

The umask is the default for files and folders, if you want to customize files and
folders permissions you should use fmask and dmask same use as the umask.
I was lost first finding the mask permissions are not like the octal permission codes
passed to the chmod command, however I found this table really helpful understanding
how the umask permissions work.

r
w
x

0
+
+
+

1
+
+

2
+

3
+

+
+

It works as the normal octal permissions but subtracted from 7, and use the absolute
value. for instance if you want to set the permissions to 0777 you will need to set it
0000 in the umask(e.g. umask=0000), if you want to set it to 0755 you will set it to
0022.
The first character represents that its an octal permissions
The second is for the owner
The third is the group
The last is for other or The World