[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Automounting filesystems in partman



Colin Watson wrote:
>   * Don't want FAT, VFAT, NTFS in fstab by default; Debian is not a
>     desktop distribution and is for people who want to configure things
>     if they want something other than minimalist defaults (fjp).

Debian _is_ a desktop distribution if the user chooses to install the
desktop task. In that case the installed system should be the best
desktop system possible. If they don't choose the desktop task things go
very differently.

The problem is that the desktop task is not selected before
partitioning, which is also why partman has to ask if the user wants a
desktop partition layout.

I don't know the solution to this yet, since it's difficult to tell if a
desktop system can even be installed from available apt sources before
base system installation has occurred.

>     - Can trigger bugs / unwanted modifications in journalling
>       filesystems, e.g. Linux XFS has problems mounting Irix XFS (ths).
>       vorlon asked whether that could be addressed by mounting
>       read-only, but apparently that still tries to replay the journal.

This seems like a good reason to not automount preexisting XFS
filesystems at all. Luckily it's rare that a desktop system needs to
mount XFS filesystems from another OS to operate well. By contrast a
desktop system does need to make available .doc files from your old
windows OS to work well.

>     - Security / confusion issues caused by mounting partitions with
>       different access control policies or different uid/gid mappings
>       (fjp).

Access control policies shouldn't matter too much on a desktop system,
but nosuid and nodev would still be reasonable mount flags for relevant
filesystems.

I think the most common case is a NTFS filesystem, where uid/gid mapping
shouldn't matter, since it ought to be mounted so the desktop user owns
the files.

-- 
see shy jo

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Reply to: