https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs-3.0.pdf
which has this to say on /media and /mnt: 3.11. /media : Mount point for removable media 3.11.1. Purpose This directory contains subdirectories which are used as mount points for removable media such as floppy disks, cdroms and zip disks. Rationale Historically there have been a number of other different places used to mount removable media such as /cdrom, /mnt or /mnt/cdrom. Placing the mount points for all removable 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. 3.11.2. Specific Options The following directories, or symbolic links to directories, must be in /media, if the corresponding subsystem is installed: Directory Description floppy Floppy drive (optional) cdrom CD-ROM drive (optional) cdrecorder CD writer (optional) zip Zip drive (optional) 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. 15 3.12. /mnt : Mount point for a temporarily mounted filesystem 3.12.1. 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. On Mon, Aug 18, 2025 at 6:42 PM Russell Senior <russ...@personaltelco.net> wrote: > > On Mon, Aug 18, 2025 at 5:53 PM Ben Koenig <techkoe...@protonmail.com> wrote: > > [...] > > Also note that this is not consistent across all distros. Back in 2005, > > /run did not exist, /media was managed by an autofs service, and all > > distros were pretty much the same here. Now, some have diverged. > > > > Technically, /media is deprecated and safe to remove since your automounter > > looks at /run/media. That might explain why Fedora doesn't have it, but > > Slackware still does. > > Fwiw, Ubuntu (and Debian, as of trixie) still uses /media for > automounted storage, no symlink involved. > > -- > Russell Senior > russ...@personaltelco.net
