by Allen Sood
The /etc/fstab and /etc/fstab are two most important directories of Linux operating system. Without them, the operating system and boot loader won’t be able to find the hard drive volumes or drives. Thus, you won’t be able to boot your system.

The /etc/fstab (contraction of file system table) is a directory of Linux operating system. It is the part of system configuration and lists all the available hard drives, drive volumes and shows how they have to be initialized or integrated in the file system.

This directory contains the description of different file systems and is commonly read by ‘mount’ and ‘fsck’ commands. The mount command determines the options that should be used while mounting any device.

The /etc/mtab (short form of mounted file systems table) directory lists all the mounted file systems on your Linux computer. Generally, it is in a specified format and gets automatically altered when mount command is used for identifying which file system is currently in use and how it is mounted (either manually or automatically).

These directories are very important for proper working of your system. Sometimes, when you try to access any Linux volume, you may encounter the following error message:

“Cannot read table of mounted file systems”

After this error message, you can’t access any files or directories from your Linux hard drive and thus face the critical situations of data loss.

Cause

You may encounter this error message due to corruption to the /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab directories. After corruption to these directories, file system can not be mounted and thus data can’t be accessed from the particular volume.

In such catastrophic situations of data loss, Linux Data Recovery comes as real help. You can easily and effectively perform Linux Recovery using third party tools, known as Linux Recovery software.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is the most comprehensive and commanding Data Recovery Linux tool that is capable of retrieving your lost data in all cases of logical crash. It supports Linux Recovery from Ext2, Ext3 and ReiserFS file system volumes. Phoenix Linux Recovery is compatible with Red Hat, SUSE, Kubuntu and several other Linux distributions.

Allen Sood a student of Mass Communication doing research on data recovery and linux data recovery software. He is also a freelancer for http://www.stellarinfo.com

Article Source: Linux Data Loss Due to Corruption to /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab Directories