getmntent(3) Library Functions Manual getmntent(3)
NAME
getmntent, setmntent, addmntent, endmntent, hasmntopt, getmntent_r - get
filesystem descriptor file entry
LIBRARY
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <stdio.h>
#include <mntent.h>
FILE *setmntent(const char *filename, const char *type);
struct mntent *getmntent(FILE *stream);
int addmntent(FILE *restrict stream,
const struct mntent *restrict mnt);
int endmntent(FILE *streamp);
char *hasmntopt(const struct mntent *mnt, const char *opt);
/* GNU extension */
#include <mntent.h>
struct mntent *getmntent_r(FILE *restrict streamp,
struct mntent *restrict mntbuf,
char buf[restrict .buflen], int buflen);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
getmntent_r():
Since glibc 2.19:
_DEFAULT_SOURCE
glibc 2.19 and earlier:
_BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE
DESCRIPTION
These routines are used to access the filesystem description file
/etc/fstab and the mounted filesystem description file /etc/mtab.
The setmntent() function opens the filesystem description file filename
and returns a file pointer which can be used by getmntent(). The argu-
ment type is the type of access required and can take the same values as
the mode argument of fopen(3). The returned stream should be closed us-
ing endmntent() rather than fclose(3).
The getmntent() function reads the next line of the filesystem descrip-
tion file from stream and returns a pointer to a structure containing
the broken out fields from a line in the file. The pointer points to a
static area of memory which is overwritten by subsequent calls to getmn-
tent().
The addmntent() function adds the mntent structure mnt to the end of the
open stream.
The endmntent() function closes the stream associated with the filesys-
tem description file.
The hasmntopt() function scans the mnt_opts field (see below) of the mn-
tent structure mnt for a substring that matches opt. See <mntent.h> and
mount(8) for valid mount options.
The reentrant getmntent_r() function is similar to getmntent(), but
stores the mntent structure in the provided *mntbuf, and stores the
strings pointed to by the entries in that structure in the provided ar-
ray buf of size buflen.
The mntent structure is defined in <mntent.h> as follows:
struct mntent {
char *mnt_fsname; /* name of mounted filesystem */
char *mnt_dir; /* filesystem path prefix */
char *mnt_type; /* mount type (see mntent.h) */
char *mnt_opts; /* mount options (see mntent.h) */
int mnt_freq; /* dump frequency in days */
int mnt_passno; /* pass number on parallel fsck */
};
Since fields in the mtab and fstab files are separated by whitespace,
octal escapes are used to represent the characters space (\040), tab
(\011), newline (\012), and backslash (\\) in those files when they oc-
cur in one of the four strings in a mntent structure. The routines ad-
dmntent() and getmntent() will convert from string representation to es-
caped representation and back. When converting from escaped representa-
tion, the sequence \134 is also converted to a backslash.
RETURN VALUE
The getmntent() and getmntent_r() functions return a pointer to the mn-
tent structure or NULL on failure.
The addmntent() function returns 0 on success and 1 on failure.
The endmntent() function always returns 1.
The hasmntopt() function returns the address of the substring if a match
is found and NULL otherwise.
FILES
/etc/fstab
filesystem description file
/etc/mtab
mounted filesystem description file
ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
┌───────────────┬───────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ setmntent(), │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
│ endmntent(), │ │ │
│ hasmntopt() │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ getmntent() │ Thread safety │ MT-Unsafe race:mntentbuf locale │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ addmntent() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe race:stream locale │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ getmntent_r() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe locale │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘
STANDARDS
None.
HISTORY
The nonreentrant functions are from SunOS 4.1.3. A routine getmn-
tent_r() was introduced in HP-UX 10, but it returns an int. The proto-
type shown above is glibc-only.
System V also has a getmntent() function but the calling sequence dif-
fers, and the returned structure is different. Under System V /etc/mnt-
tab is used. 4.4BSD and Digital UNIX have a routine getmntinfo(), a
wrapper around the system call getfsstat().
SEE ALSO
fopen(3), fstab(5), mount(8)
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-06-15 getmntent(3)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:45:38 CET 2025.