Purpose

This directory contains subdirectories which are used as mount points for removeable media such as floppy disks, cdroms and zip disks.

 

Rationale

Historically there have been a number of other different places used to mount removeable media such as /cdrom, /mnt or /mnt/cdrom. Placing the mount points for all removeable media directly in the root directory would potentially result in a large number of extra directories in /. Although the use of subdirectories in /mnt as a mount point has recently been common, it conflicts with a much older tradition of using /mnt directly as a temporary mount point.

Specific Options

The following directories, or symbolic links to directories, must be in /media, if the corresponding subsystem is installed:

On systems where more than one device exists for mounting a certain type of media, mount directories can be created by appending a digit to the name of those available above starting with ‘0‘, but the unqualified name must also exist. [16]

Purpose

This directory is provided so that the system administrator may temporarily mount a filesystem as needed. The content of this directory is a local issue and should not affect the manner in which any program is run.

This directory must not be used by installation programs: a suitable temporary directory not in use by the system must be used instead.