Re: Packages needing to be tested
> I wouldn't want passive translators with a backing store show up in
> /etc/mtab, so I think volunatry and dynamic registration by the servers
> would be the way to go (note that enforcing such a policy is not useful, we
> already enfore registration with proc for user level filesystems).
Thomas and I discussed many ideas around this a long time ago. The
conclusion that we came to is that the only purposes we have for anything
like mtab (or its in-core equivalents on other unix systems) is to have a
list of "interesting filesystems" for df to show you by default. Perhaps
also you might like something a la unix's mount with no args to show you
the fsysopts output for each interesting filesystem. On unix, only root
can designate a filesystem as interesting so that df will print it, and
this is done by the explicit action of running mount. So for the Hurd,
there doesn't seem to be a reason for anything other than a hand-maintained
file to list the "interesting" filesystems. Since /etc/fstab is already
just such a file that is used for fsck at boot time, it seems reasonable
enough to use that for df too.
> > Another option that seems more like what you're proposing is keeping
> > a persistent registry of all used filesystems. Come to think of it,
> > it would be very much like /etc/fstab. But fstab is already used for
> > mounting partitions at boot time,
>
> Not on the Hurd. We use it for fsck only.
And df.
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