on Sat, Dec 01, 2001 at 09:37:48PM -0500, Hall Stevenson (hallstevenson@mindspring.com) wrote: > * Karsten M. Self (kmself@ix.netcom.com) [011201 20:51]: > > on Sat, Dec 01, 2001 at 02:55:09PM -0500, Hall Stevenson > (hallstevenson@mindspring.com) wrote: > > > I already tried mount as you mention. It basically looks exactly > > > like /etc/mtab... > > > > > > /dev/hdb6 on / type auto (rw,errors=remount-ro,errors=remount-ro 1 ) > > > /dev/hdbon /boot type ext3 (rw ) > > > > How about cat /proc/mounts? > > Yes, that does tell me what I wanted. You snipped that part of my > message when you replied to it though... > > > I discourage the practice of mounting system partitions with type > > 'auto'. > > Okay, why ?? I'm open to reason. I seem to recall that this page, > http://www.uow.edu.au/~andrewm/linux/ext3/ext3-usage.html, says to use > 'auto'. I have to trust their opinion there... (btw, the page/server > seems to be misconfigured at the moment... I'm getting a 'Forbidden' > message) First: I prefer explicit to implicit assignments. Saying "mount this puppy as ext3" means I know how it's going to be mounted, and will get an explicit error if the prerequisites aren't met. The same logic says that you shouldn't rely on operator precedence but make order explicit with grouping operators (parentheses) when programming. The advantage of 'auto' _may_ be that this allows you to go back and forth between kernels supporting ext3 and ext2. Though this probably isn't a great idea of itself. Not sure what happens if you boot a system with an ext3 rootfs that only supports ext2. Second: the default filesystem search order (the 'auto' option's got to try things in some order) according to both the 'mount' manpage and /proc/filesystems, puts ext2 before ext3, IIRC. This means that you have to rely on other means (/etc/filesystems) to override the default behavior. There's the possibility that the documentation is wrong or misleading. The mount (1) manpage lists ext3 _after_ ext2 in discussion the 'auto' fs type. Whether this implies search order is unclear. In any event, I'd not want to rely on it in its current state. I had a recent email discussion with Dennis Powell (of LinuxPlanet) concerning his issues with ext3fs support in SuSE in which he basically (and rather rudely) told me I was flat wrong WRT specifying 'auto' as the fs type. He didn't provide output of any of the diagnostic steps I suggested (contents of /proc/filesystems and /etc/filesystems). I may be wrong regarding the default filesystem detection, but I maintain that you're better off explicitly stating what it is that you want, particularly for system partitions. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html
Attachment:
pgpy_NYTfG97z.pgp
Description: PGP signature