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I am trying to make olddir accessible from newdir with the mount command:

mount olddir newdir

Why do I get the following error?

mount: olddir is not a block device

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2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

mount attaches block storage devices that contain a filesystem to a directory, which is not what you're trying to do, hence the error message. What you want is to create a link from the new directory name to the old existing name. For that you must use the ln command to create a symbolic link.

ln -s olddir newdir
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I'm trying what you suggested, but instead of linking from olddir to newdir, it create a symlink called olddir inside newdir. So for example, after doing ln -s /olddir /newdir I end up with /newdir/olddir@ which links to /olddir. How do I make it do what you said? – trusktr Mar 31 at 9:19
newdir should be the name you want created that points back to olddir. newdir should not already exist. – Kyle Jones Mar 31 at 20:05
I totally understand what you mean, and that's what I'm trying to do, but it's doing something really odd, completely different. /olddir exists, and /newdir does not exist. Then, after I run ln -s /olddir /newdir, it is creating /newdir/olddir which links to /olddir. I don't want it to create /newdir/olddir. I want it to create /newdir only, which should link to /olddir, but that's not what happening. So instead of making /newddir, it is making /newdir/olddir. It's so weird!!! Get what I mean? – trusktr Apr 9 at 0:44
up vote 6 down vote

On Linux one can perform a bind mount, which will splice an existing directory to a new mount point.

mount --bind <olddir> <mountpoint>

Solaris supports an alternate syntax:

mount -F lofs <olddir> <mountpoint>

*BSD uses mount_null instead (although it does not come with OS X).

mount_null <olddir> <mountpoint>
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Exactly the answer! – trusktr Mar 31 at 9:21

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