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Remounting a Linux OS disk to see under mountpoints

Last Updated: [2023-12-25 Mon 06:34]

Sometimes you'll find yourself in a situation where you need to access the root partition of a Linux system without mounted disks being in the way. Examples include:

Using du to hunt down large files or directories
Looking for files that might have been written to a mount point before a disk was mounted

It is certinaly possible to do this, and quite simple too. It is achieved by creating a mountpoint, then using the bind function on the mount command to mount and already mounted filesystem at a new location:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/tmproot
sudo mount --bind / /mnt/tmproot

In this example, the root directory is mounted at /mnt/tmproot

When you're done, you can unmount the directory in the usual way:

sudo umount /mnt/tmproot

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