/mnt
a place to mount by hand/mnt is a spare attachment point. To use a disk, Linux mounts it onto a directory, and the disk’s contents then appear there. /mnt is the conventional place to do that temporarily — for a backup drive, a network share, or a disk being repaired.
A disk has no letter. It appears wherever you mount it.
Why it exists
Every directory at the top of the tree is there for a reason. This is the problem /mnt solves.
A filesystem can be mounted on any directory, but it hides whatever was there before. A directory kept empty for the purpose avoids surprises.
/mnt is for mounts the administrator makes for a task and then removes. Mounts that should return at every boot are listed in /etc/fstab instead.
What you find inside
Not everything, but the entries worth recognising. Each is marked as a directory, a file, a link or a device.
- backupdirectoryA directory made to mount a backup disk on.
- usbdirectoryA directory made to mount a USB stick on.
- cdirectoryUnder WSL, the Windows C: drive appears here.
- nfsdirectoryA directory made to mount a network share on.
At the terminal
Four commands that show what this directory is doing on a real machine.
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mntAttach a partition. Its files now appear under /mnt.
sudo umount /mntDetach it. Do this before unplugging the disk.
findmnt /mntShow what, if anything, is mounted there.
sudo mkdir /mnt/backupMake a sub-directory, so several things can be mounted at once.
Handle with care
What goes wrong here, and what someone securing or attacking the machine looks at.
Data waiting to be written is lost if a disk is pulled while mounted. umount finishes the writes; it reports “target is busy” if a program is still using the disk.
If a mount failed, a backup script writing to /mnt/backup fills the root filesystem instead. Scripts should test with findmnt or mountpoint first.