/dev/cdrom is a link to a "device special file" which the system uses to communicate with the cdrom drive. It is not a directory, so you couldn't mount something on it.
The device files are (a little like) pointers to hardware. If you start trying to change them around, you usually end up screwing up the system in a big way unless you absolutely know what you are doing As to what is normally mounted where: this varies from one build of unit to another. Quite often, you have real partitiona mounted under /, /boot, /usr, and possibly /home. The reason file systems are mounted where they are is pretty much historical convention; it is _possible_ to set up a system with completely different directory structures, but it's pretty rare that you'd do that because the conventions are well understood by unix / linux savvy folks, a non-standard setup can take forever to understand, and you gain nothing by changing it. I guess it's just the way we all got used to. :) To find out exactly what you have mounted where on your system there are a couple of ways. The most complete techie way is to look at the contents of /etc/fstab (pron "Eff-Ess-Tab", not ""Fstab") which tells the system what to mount where. An easier way is to go to a command prompt and type: df -k and you should get a list a bit like this: Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda2 37334192 15128396 20309324 43% / /dev/hda1 101089 8902 86968 10% /boot none 256948 0 256948 0% /dev/shm "Filesystem" is the thing that's mounted, and the last column tells you what it's mounted on. Paul. On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 14:04, Abhijit Vijay wrote: > Hi All, > > I had a query regarding linux mount partitions, which > I was trying to understand. I understand that Linux > mounts certain partitions by default at certain > locations. You have the kernel image which is located > at /boot (?) and the root partition /root mounted at / > But why is it that /dev/cdrom is mounted by default on > /mnt/cdrom? Why not reduce confusion and mount it on > /dev/cdrom itself? Also, what are the other partitions > that are mounted by default and their default > locations? > > Thanks in advance, > Regards, > Abhijit. > > __________________________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site > http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in > the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs > -- Paul Furness Systems Manager 2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
