linux stupidity of the day: if you call "mount -a" repeatedly, it keeps all mounts in the fstab mounted. if you call "mount /path/to/mount" repeatedly (where /path/to/mount is a mount defined in the fstab), then the mount will be mounted once for every time you call it. you can quickly end up with a volume mounted 1000 times because of your cron script to ensure it was mounted at all. and to unmount it? you have to call the same umount command, "umount /path/to/mount", 1000 times. nice :/