Something bad could happen if you delete /etc/vfstab by mistake and you do not have a backup, the system would not find the required partitions to boot, they are: root (/), /usr, and /var.

To recover it, if you realialized that the /etc/vfstab file has been deleted but do not rebooted yet, you can accomplish this with “mount -p”.

The mount command is used to mount a filesystem to a directory tree.

mount [<options>] [-o <specificOptions>] <mountDevice> <mountPoint>

The options can be:

-F <FSType> : The type of filesystem to mount can be specified.

-m : Mount the filesystem without updating the entry in /etc/mnttab

-p : Print the mounted filesystems in a vfstab file format.

-r : Mount the filesystem in ReadOnly mode.

-v : Display the mounted filesystems list in verbose mode.