On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 9:15 AM, Neil Bothwick <n...@digimed.co.uk> wrote: > On Mon, 4 Jul 2011 12:12:03 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > >> > > o - Do live CDs actually mount filesystems on HDDs? >> >> > Only when you ask them to. >> >> I'm stupid. Of _course_ a live CD can't mount HDD filesystems at boot. >> To do this it would need /etc/fstab, for which it would need to be told >> the root partition. A live CD doesn't get this. > > A live CD can mount partitions automatically at boot, some do. all it > needs to do is scan the disk partition tables, create the mount points > and mount them. > > Knoppix has been doing the first two for years, and writing the details > to /etc/fstab to allow the user to mount them easily. > > > -- > Neil Bothwick > > A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard. >
And to further complicate it, many also use a similar technique for finding themselves, mounting one filesystem after another until they find some distinct marker file to identify where to find the rest of their data. Others auto-mount and poke around for auto-loading of extensions unless such features are disabled by a boot-time option. -- Joshua M. Murphy
