remountable

Remountable is an adjective used to describe a capability of a file system or a device to be re-mounted, or re-associating with the same path but with different parameters. This allows multiple instances of a file system or a device to be available simultaneously from the same path, each with its own set of parameters.

Remountable file systems can be widely used in various operating system environments for various purposes such as caching, striping, and snapshotting. In these use cases, the same file system can be mounted with different mount options, allowing users to take multiple snapshots of a file system at different points in time without needing to allocate new resources.

The capability to remount a file system is not limited to just file systems but can also be applied to other types of devices. A remountable device can be a device that can be forcibly remounted, usually without unmounting it first. Some file systems provide a way to remount a device without unmounting the file system.

When using a remountable file system or device, care must be taken not to associate the same path with multiple instances, which can lead to unexpected results. The file system or device must be specifically designed to handle remounting. Also, some file systems may have mounting or password requirements that, upon remounting, can cause authentication failures.

Operating systems that provide remountable capability include Linux and some Unix-based systems, which often include commands to remount a device on a file system, such as the mount and certificate file management tools. This concept is essential to cluster environments and provides the advantage of having the same Disk image with the same Device mapped to a different location with alternatives configurations set according to the need of the productivity demand using caching as a primary example.