This is a brief overview of the Linux filesystem type and /etc/fstab file. Linux supports a veritable plethora of filesystem types, though the most common, and the default one at the lab is the ext2 which supports longer filenames and larger inodes, among other things. Here's a brief list of the other filesystems that are supported under Linux:
 

EXT old, rarely used
MSDOS
HPFS OS/2 type
NTFS New NT filesystem, just barely supported at this time.
AIX
Fat32
VFat Win95/98 Filesystem
Minix
BSD
ISO9660 CDROM's
NFS
SWAP

The /etc/fstab file is the standard SysV style fstab. Here's an example:
 

/dev/hda1 			/ 			ext2 defaults 		1 1

/dev/hdd2 			/local 			ext2 defaults 		1 2

/dev/hda7 			/usr/vice 		ext2 defaults 		1 2

/dev/hda6 			swap 			swap defaults 		0 0

/dev/floppy 			/mnt/floppy 		ext2 noauto,user,exec 	0 0

/dev/fd0 			/mnt/floppy 		ext2 noauto,user,exec 	0 0

/dev/cdrom 			/mnt/cdrom 		iso9660 noauto,ro,user,exec 	0 0

/dev/hdc 			/mnt/cdrom 		iso9660 noauto,ro,user,exec 	0 0

none 				/proc 			proc defaults 		0 0

linux:/export/linux/50test 	/mnt/linux/50test 	nfs soft,intr,rw,noauto 0 0

linux:/export/linux/51test 	/mnt/linux/51test 	nfs soft,intr,rw,noauto 0 0

linux:/export/linux/current 	/mnt/linux/current 	nfs soft,intr,rw,noauto 0 0

linux:/export/linux/generic 	/mnt/linux/generic 	nfs soft,intr,rw,noauto 0 0

topaz:/home 			/mnt/topaz 		nfs soft,intr,rw,noauto	0 0

/dev/hdd1 			/mnt/51 		ext2 defaults 		0 0

/dev/hdd2 			/mnt/51/home 		ext2 defaults 		0 0

/dev/hdd3 			/mnt/51/usr/vice 	ext2 defaults,noauto 	0 0

/dev/hdd4 			/mnt/51/swap 		ext2 defaults,noauto 	0 0

Where the 1st entry is the device; the 2nd is the mount point; the 3rd is the type; the 4th is the options; the 5th is the field used by dump to determine which filesystems need to be backed up; and the 6th is used by fsck to determine which filesystems need to be checked at boot time.