Mount
A mount most commonly refers to a mountain, a prominent geographical landform that rises at least 300 meters (984 feet) above its surroundings, often with steep slopes and a summit.[1][2] The English word "mount" has numerous other meanings, including in places (such as settlements), people (as a surname), computing (file system operations), sports (equestrian activities), and more. For these and additional uses, see the sections below.Places
Settlements and Towns
Mount Vernon in Fairfax County, Virginia, is the historic estate and primary residence of George Washington, who inherited and became proprietor of the property in 1754. Originally part of a larger patented land grant from the late 17th century, the plantation was significantly expanded under Washington's oversight, serving as his home from 1759 until his death in 1799 and briefly for his wife Martha until 1802. Today, the 500-acre site is preserved and operated as a National Historic Landmark by the nonprofit Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, drawing more than 800,000 visitors in 2024 to explore its mansion, gardens, and interpretive exhibits on 18th-century plantation life.[3][4][5] Mount Pleasant, Michigan, founded in 1859 as the county seat of Isabella County, developed as a key settlement in central Michigan's agricultural heartland before evolving into a prominent university town. The arrival of Central Michigan University in 1892 spurred growth, transforming the community into an educational hub with programs in over 200 fields; as of the 2024 estimate, the city had a population of 21,090, supported by an economy blending higher education, healthcare services, and proximity to regional farming operations.[6][7][8] In contrast, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, emerged as a coastal suburb of Charleston with European settlement dating to 1680 under Captain Florentia O'Sullivan, though formal incorporation occurred in 1803 through the merger of nearby villages. Known for its Antebellum architecture and the preserved Old Village Historic District, the town recorded a population of 95,604 as of the 2024 estimate, with its economy driven by residential development, tourism along the Intracoastal Waterway, and commercial retail rather than heavy industry.[9][10] Mount Airy, North Carolina, incorporated in 1885 amid the region's granite boom, gained national recognition as the birthplace of actor Andy Griffith and the real-life inspiration for the fictional town of Mayberry in the 1960s television series The Andy Griffith Show. The city's economy historically centered on the world's largest open-face granite quarry, established in 1889, alongside furniture manufacturing and agriculture; as of the 2024 estimate, its population stood at 10,583, bolstered today by heritage tourism that recreates Mayberry landmarks and events.[11][12][13]Natural Landmarks
Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, stands at 8,848.86 meters (29,031.69 feet) above sea level and is located on the border between Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China within the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas.[14][15] Formed by the ongoing collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, which began approximately 50 million years ago, Everest continues to rise at a rate of about 4 millimeters per year due to this tectonic activity.[15] The mountain's first successful summit was achieved on May 29, 1953, by New Zealand's Edmund Hillary and Nepal's Tenzing Norgay as part of a British expedition.[16] Its glaciers, such as the South Col Glacier, have been significantly impacted by climate change, with the highest glacier losing the equivalent of 2,000 years of ice accumulation over the past 30 years due to rising temperatures and reduced precipitation.[17] Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest peak at 5,895 meters, is a dormant stratovolcano situated in northern Tanzania near the Kenyan border, rising in isolation above the surrounding savanna plains.[18] Composed of three volcanic cones—Kibo (the highest and youngest), Mawenzi, and Shira—it formed over the last 2.5 million years through repeated eruptions associated with the East African Rift system, building layers of lava, ash, and rock including basalts and andesites.[19][20] Despite its equatorial location, Kilimanjaro has long featured snow-capped summits and glaciers that have persisted for about 11,000 years, though these ice features are rapidly retreating due to climate change, with projections indicating their potential disappearance within decades from reduced snowfall and warmer conditions.[21][22] Mount Fuji, an iconic active stratovolcano in central Japan approximately 100 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, reaches a height of 3,776 meters and is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its cultural and natural significance.[23] It developed over the past 2.6 million years in two main phases: the older Komitake Fuji (formed 700,000–800,000 years ago) followed by the younger Shin-Fuji, which includes the current symmetric cone built from layers of andesitic lava and pyroclastic deposits during the Holocene epoch.[24] As a sacred pilgrimage destination for centuries, particularly during the annual climbing season, Fuji last erupted in 1707–1708 CE with the Hoei eruption, which deposited ash as far as Edo (modern Tokyo) and caused widespread agricultural damage.[24]People
Individuals with Surname Mount
William Sidney Mount (1807–1868) was an American genre painter renowned for his depictions of rural life on Long Island, New York, where he captured everyday scenes with humor, detail, and social commentary.[25] Born on November 26, 1807, in Setauket, he apprenticed as a sign painter under his older brother Henry before studying at the National Academy of Design in New York City, eventually becoming a full academician in 1832.[26] Mount produced over 200 works, including seminal pieces like Eel Spearing at Setauket (1845), which portrays African American and white fishermen in a harmonious rural setting, and The Banjo Player (1856), highlighting his dignified representations of African Americans during an era of racial tension.[27] His contributions to American genre painting emphasized the lives of common folk, influencing later artists and establishing him as a pioneer in the field.[25] Peggy Mount (1915–2001), born Margaret Rose Mount on 2 May 1915 in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, was a British actress celebrated for her portrayals of formidable, comedic battleaxe characters in stage, film, and television.[28] She rose to prominence in 1955 with her West End debut as the domineering Emma Hornett in the farce Sailor Beware!, a role she reprised in the 1956 film adaptation, marking her breakthrough after years in repertory theater.[29] Mount's film career included standout performances in The Naked Truth (1957) opposite Peter Sellers and Hotel Paradiso (1966) with Alec Guinness, while her television work spanned iconic sitcoms such as The Larkins (1958–1964) as the matriarch Ada Larkin, George and the Dragon (1966–1968), and You're Only Young Twice (1977–1981).[30] Honored with the Order of the British Empire in 1996 for her services to drama, she also tackled serious roles, including the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet (1960) at the Old Vic and Mother Courage in Bertolt Brecht's play (1977).[29] Ferdinand Mount (born 1939), known professionally as Ferdie Mount, is a British writer, novelist, and journalist whose career spans literature, politics, and editorial leadership.[31] Born William Robert Ferdinand Mount on July 2 in London to a family of baronets—his father was a steeplechase jockey—he was educated at Eton College, Christ Church, Oxford, and the University of Vienna before entering journalism and politics.[32] As head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit under Margaret Thatcher from 1982 to 1983, he drafted the Conservative Party's 1983 general election manifesto, shaping key policy directions.[32] Mount served as editor of The Times Literary Supplement from 1991 to 2002 and has been a longtime columnist for The Sunday Times, contributing political commentary on conservatism and society.[33] His literary output includes the novel The Man Who Rode Ampersand (1975), the first in his Chronicle of Modern Twilight series, and Fairness (2001), which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; non-fiction works like The Subversive Family (1987) and the memoir Cold Cream (2005) explore personal and cultural themes.[31] Anson Mount (born February 25, 1973) is an American actor known for his roles in television and film, including Caleb in Hell on Wheels (2011–2016) and Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek: Discovery (2017, 2019) and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022–present). Mason Mount (born January 10, 1999) is an English professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Manchester United in the Premier League and the England national team. He began his career at Chelsea, where he made over 100 appearances before transferring to Manchester United in 2023.Fictional Characters
In Carol Emshwiller's speculative fiction novel The Mount (2002), the protagonist Charley serves as a central figure in a dystopian narrative depicting an alien invasion where humans are domesticated and ridden like horses by the invading Hoots.[34] Charley's character arc revolves around his growing resistance against these overlords, evolving from passive acceptance of subjugation to active rebellion, which underscores themes of human autonomy and exploitation.[35] First appearing in the 2002 publication, Charley symbolizes broader motifs of oppression and the fight for freedom in Emshwiller's work.[34]Computing and Software
File System Operations
In computing, particularly within Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, mounting a file system refers to the process of attaching the file system residing on a storage device, such as a hard drive partition, or a remote network share, to a specific point in the host system's directory tree. This integration makes the contents of the attached file system accessible as though they were part of the local directory hierarchy, enabling seamless navigation and operations across multiple storage sources without requiring separate access mechanisms.[36] The unified namespace provided by mounting is a core feature of Unix-derived systems, contrasting with approaches in other operating systems that maintain isolated drive letters or volumes.[37] The mounting process generally involves three key steps: identifying the source device or resource, such as /dev/sda1 for a local disk partition; designating an empty directory as the mount point, for example /mnt/data; and executing the attachment, often with options to customize behavior, including -o ro for read-only mode to prevent modifications or protocol-specific settings like those for NFS (Network File System) or SMB (Server Message Block) for remote shares.[36] In Linux, this is facilitated through kernel-level interfaces that validate the file system type and integrate it into the virtual file system (VFS) layer, ensuring compatibility and proper resource allocation.[38] For persistent mounts across reboots, configurations are typically defined in /etc/fstab, which supports automounting to streamline access in multi-device setups.[37] The concept of file system mounting originated in early Unix systems developed at Bell Labs during the 1970s, with initial implementations appearing in Version 5 AT&T UNIX in 1973 and becoming more formalized in the 6th Edition (1975), the first version widely distributed beyond Bell Labs.[39] By Version 7 UNIX in 1979, mounting was essential for managing environments with multiple physical devices, such as disks and tapes, allowing them to be treated as a cohesive file tree in time-sharing systems.[36] Modern extensions in Linux kernels, including support for diverse file system types via the VFS and automounting through fstab or systemd, build on this foundation to accommodate complex, networked storage configurations.[38] Technical aspects of mounting include error handling, where common issues such as "wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1" arise from mismatches in file system detection, invalid options, or corrupted metadata, often requiring manual intervention like specifying the type with -t ext4.[36] Security considerations mandate root privileges for most mounts to mitigate risks of unauthorized device access or privilege escalation, though options like user in fstab permit limited non-root usage under controlled conditions.[36] Performance impacts are generally minimal for local mounts but can introduce I/O overhead in networked scenarios, such as NFS, where latency from remote communication may reduce throughput compared to direct disk access.[40]Command-Line Utilities
Themount command is a fundamental Unix-like utility for attaching a file system, located on a device or other source, to an existing directory in the file hierarchy, making its contents accessible.[36] It operates by invoking the kernel's mount(2) system call and supports specifying the file system type with the -t option, as in the syntax mount [-t fstype] [device](/page/Device) dir.[36] For instance, to mount an ext4-formatted partition from /dev/sdb1 to the /home directory, the command mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb1 /home is used, assuming the target directory exists and has appropriate permissions.[41] This utility is part of the util-linux package, which has evolved significantly since version 2.12 in 2003, with key enhancements like the introduction of a libmount-based implementation in version 2.21 (2011) for improved handling of complex mount operations and dependencies.[42]
The umount command serves as the counterpart to mount, detaching a specified file system from the directory tree to prevent further access and allow safe device removal or reconfiguration.[43] It requires the mount point directory or device as an argument, such as umount /home, and cannot succeed if the file system is in use by processes.[43] For busy systems where immediate unmounting is problematic, the -l (lazy) option defers the unmount until the file system is no longer active, detaching it from the namespace promptly while cleaning up references asynchronously.[43] Like mount, umount is included in util-linux and benefits from its post-2000 updates, including better error reporting and integration with modern kernel features in versions beyond 2.21.[42]
Platform-specific variants extend these core functionalities. On macOS, the diskutil command-line tool manages disk operations, including mounting volumes with syntax like diskutil mount /dev/disk2s1 to attach a specific partition. In Windows, mountvol handles volume mount points without assigning drive letters, using commands such as mountvol X: \\?\Volume{guid}\ to create a junction or mountvol X: /D to delete one, facilitating NTFS-based mounting in server environments.[44] Modern Linux distributions integrate mounting with systemd via .mount unit files, which automate attachment at boot or on demand; for example, a unit file named home.mount can specify What=/dev/sdb1 and Where=/home to handle persistent mounts without manual intervention.[45]
Practical usage often involves troubleshooting and best practices to ensure reliability. To diagnose unmount failures due to active processes, the fuser command identifies users of a mount point, as in fuser -mu /home to list processes and users accessing it, allowing targeted termination before retrying umount.[46] A key best practice is avoiding mount loops—recursive attachments where a directory mounts itself—by relying on the mount command's built-in checks against the kernel's mount table, which prevent redundant or circular operations; manual verification with mount | grep /home before mounting confirms no existing attachment.[36] These tools emphasize safe, non-disruptive operations, with options like -n (no mtab update) in mount for read-only or temporary setups in constrained environments.[36]