Systemd Mounts

INTRODUCTION

Aside from managing services, systemd can also handle filesystem mounts similar to /etc/fstab. In this post, I
will show you how to mount local and remote filesystems using systemd.

MOUNTING A LOCAL FILESYSTEM

1. Create your .mount unit file

cat << EOF >> /etc/systemd/system/test.mount  # unit filename must match the mountpoint
[Unit]
Description=test mount

[Mount]
What=/dev/mapper/test_vg-test_lv
Where=/test  # this mountpoint must match the name of the unit file
                     # if this directory doesn't exist, systemd will create it with 0755 permissions

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target  # if we want to mount the fs on boot, add this Install section
EOF
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start test.mount
systemctl enable test.mount  # this mounts filesystem at startup

2. Validate mount

[root@server ~]# df /test
Filesystem                  1K-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/test_vg-test_lv   1041060 32944   1008116   4% /test

[root@server ~]#

Now that you have mounted a filesystem using systemd, you can unmount it by "systemctl stop test.mount"
or still by traditional way of "umount /test". The latter will automatically stop test.mount. If the mountpoint
is as series of directory tree (e.g /test/sub1), change the unit filename to test-sub1.mount and update
the Where= option.

MOUNTING A REMOTE FILESYSTEM

In the previous part, we used a local filesystem. Now let's try using a CIFS share to mount using systemd.

1. Create your .mount unit file

cat << EOF >> /etc/systemd/system/cifs.mount
[Unit]
Description=test mount (CIFS)

[Mount]
What=//192.168.122.11/share
Where=/cifs
Options=credentials=/root/cifscreds  # you can specify here mount options

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start cifs.mount
systemctl enable cifs.mount

2. Validate mount

[root@server ~]# df /cifs
Filesystem            1K-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
//192.168.122.11/share   1041060 32944   1008116   4% /cifs
[root@server ~]#

SOURCES

Man pages:
systemd.mount(5) - contains basice usage and options