# <fs>        <mountpoint>    <type>  	<opts>      			<dump/pass>

/dev/hda1       /boot           ext2		noauto,noatime			1 1
/dev/hdc7       /               xfs		noatime,osyncisdsync,nodiratime	0 0
/dev/hdc5       none            swap		sw				0 0
/dev/cdrom      /mnt/cdrom      iso9660	noauto,ro,user			0 0
# /proc should always be enabled
proc            /proc           proc		defaults				0 0

Now, take a look at the /proc line and notice the defaults option. Use defaults whenever you want a filesystem to be mounted with just the standard mount options. Since /etc/fstab has multiple fields, we can't simply leave the option field blank.

Also notice the /etc/fstab line for /dev/hdc5. This line defines /dev/hdc5 as a swap device. Since swap devices aren't mounted like filesystems, none is specified in the mountpoint field. Thanks to this /etc/fstab entry, our /dev/hdc5 swap device will be enabled automatically when the system starts up.

With an /etc/fstab entry for /dev/cdrom like the one above, mounting the CD-ROM drive becomes easier. Instead of typing:

# mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom -o ro

We can now type:

# mount /dev/cdrom

In fact, using /etc/fstab allows us to take advantage of the user option. The user mount option tells the system to allow this particular filesystem to be mounted by any user. This comes in handy for removable media devices like CD-ROM drives. Without this fstab mount option, only the root user would be able to use the CD-ROM drive.