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Re: RFC: New required package: libblkid1



Hi,

On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 01:55:20AM -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote:

> If the rule is that /run gets nuked at reboot, so it's not persistent,
> there will be very few files that that are eligible, and given that
> there is also a need for writable, persistent files on the root
> filesystem --- again, I ask the question --- what's the point?

That there is a need for writable, persistent files on the root
filesystem is considered a problem by some people, not a given.

Of course, a lot of things can already be moved under /var without any
changes to the FHS. Adjtime, audio mixer settings, and whatnot.

But then there are a few files that must be written to and remain intact
as long as the system is up, and be writable *before* a networked /var
can be mounted: ifstate, now in /etc/network. Also resolv.conf, when
using dhcp.

/run is a good place for these; it's available for writing before /var,
and the files are generally easily re-created at boot time. Non-trivial
persistent files will have to wait till /var is mounted, for sure.

If you have a better suggestion for making a readonly root except during
relatively maintenance tasks possible (and installing system-wide shared
libraries or disks fall would indeed fall under this category), I'd be
happy to hear it.

But let's at least not require a non-trivial persitent file that must be
read and written in order to mount /var. 

So far I don't get that idea from blkids.tab, but I would really regret
that. I'd hate to have something like mtab that *must* exist, *must* be
written to and contains non-trivial content, so that a preserved version
*must* be available immediately.

(Something entirely different then: why XML? Do you really want mount to
contain an XML parser? It seems like tabular data more than a highly
structured tree, so why not simply use a : or tab-separated file? Just
a bit curious).

Cheers,


Emile.

-- 
E-Advies - Emile van Bergen           emile@e-advies.nl      
tel. +31 (0)70 3906153           http://www.e-advies.nl    

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