Re: Get rid of /etc/mtab ?
On Fri, Jun 28, 2002 at 09:47:47AM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 28, 2002 at 12:21:40PM +1000, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> > This comes up every now and then and deserves a FAQ entry (if it hasn't one
> > already).
>
> It's a valid complaint. The duplication of similar information is bad,
> and /etc/mtab is cleaner as a symlink. I would like to see the additional
> information in /etc/mtab put into /proc/mounts too, though I appreciate
> it's difficult (since the kernel does not know about these extra bits of
> information; it's all handled in userspace by mount/umount).
Duplication of similar information? I don't see it that way. /proc/mounts is
from the kernel's point of view. /etc/mtab is from the user's point of view.
The current setup means that new features can be easily added to
mount/umount without modifying the kernel.
Does the kernel really need to know the relationships between loop devices,
quotas, bind mounts, etc? Just so it can display something that looks like
/etc/mtab? Should the /proc/mounts code really need updating everytime
losetup or the quota stuff get a new option? This properly belongs in
userspace.
Anyway, the status quo will probably win on this anyway :)
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that can do binary
> arithmetic and those that can't.
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