After connecting an external USB backup drive, an administrator appends this line to /etc/fstab:
UUID=ad4e-113c /backup ext4 defaults 0 2
When the drive is not attached, the system waits for roughly 90 seconds and then drops to emergency mode because /backup cannot be mounted. The goal is to let the server complete the normal boot sequence even if the device is missing, yet still allow the drive to be mounted later with the usual mount -a command once it is plugged back in.
Which single mount option added to the fstab entry meets this requirement?
Adding the nofail option marks the mount as optional. During boot, systemd (or mountall on older distributions) will attempt the mount but will allow the boot process to continue without raising a fatal error if the device is absent or the mount fails. Because the entry remains in /etc/fstab, the administrator can still mount the filesystem later with mount -a or an explicit mount command.
noauto stops the device from being mounted automatically at boot, so it would never mount with mount -a unless explicitly specified on the command line.
_netdev only changes dependency ordering for network filesystems and has no effect on a local USB disk.
errors=remount-ro governs how an already-mounted filesystem behaves after experiencing runtime errors; it does not address a missing device.
Therefore, nofail is the correct choice.
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