Re: PROPOSAL for FHS revised : Mount points for CDs, floppies and alien OS partitions.]
Circa 2000-Jun-22 09:26:49 +1000 schrieb Daniel Bradley:
: "Brian F. Kimball" wrote:
: > On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 03:02:12PM +0200, Johannes Poehlmann wrote:
: > > There may be a new subdirectory "/mounts". [...]
: >
: > If this must be standardized, please pick something that's already in
: > use by a large number of people instead of inventing a scheme that zero
: > people use right now. In other words, use /mnt/*. Using /mnt/*
: > disrupts those distributions and users who don't already use it. Using
: > /mounts disrupts everyone.
:
: Not really, it allows those distributions that currently use /mnt/* to
: just add a symlink /mounts --> /mnt to become complient.
Not if /mnt/ is supposed to be left for temporary mount points, as both
the original and the revised proposal indicate.
I still have two philosophical problems with the proposal as revised:
(1) As Brian Kimball points out, and as i have pointed out
previously, /mnt/{cdrom,floppy} is already accepted practice by a
large number of Linux systems, many of which are mainstream
distributions.
(2) To my knowledge, use of /mnt/ as a temporary mount point is not
nearly as widespread as the practice of /mnt/{cdrom,floppy}. If
it's necessary to have a place for temporary mount points,
/mnt/tmp is perfectly acceptable, as might also be /tmp/mnt.
Regardless, and whether or not a temporary mount point ought to
be specified, this is no reason not to use the existing top-level
directory /mnt/ for containing standard system mount points for
primary removable devices (and possibly secondary ones as well).
I also am of the opinion that it would be beneficial to specify as
little as possible in this area. For example:
/mnt/ Contains mount points
cdrom/ Mount point for primary CD-ROM device, if present
floppy/ Mount point for primary floppy device, if present
tmp/ Temporary mount point
If a cdrom or compatible device is accessible by a host, then
/mnt/cdrom should exist on that host. If a 1.44 MB or compatible
floppy device is accessible, then /mnt/floppy should likewise
exist.
Mount points for other devices (DVD drives, Zip/Jaz/Orb or other
removable drives, secondary CD-ROM drives, etc.) may likewise exist
under /mnt/.
The type of filesystem mounted on /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/floppy is
deliberately not specified, since it's quite possible for the
filesystems to be served over the network by a remote machine.
Entries in /etc/fstab are also deliberately left unspecified, since
the system may use an automounter (such as amd or autofs) or may
mount filesystems using mount(8) with or without /etc/fstab entries.
The above codifies what is in many cases existing practice, and avoids
specifying unimportant implementation-dependent details. An LSB (or
FHS?) compliant app or installation utility can only expect that, after
requesting that the user "insert the CD into the CD-ROM drive and mount
the CD-ROM drive", the filesystem on the CD will appear to be mounted
below /mnt/cdrom/. That's all. That's all that's necessary.
I suggest avoiding specification of unusual or less-prevalent devices,
such as DVD drives or removable drives, since they're less widely used.
In fact, the only reason to specify mount points for CD-ROMs and
floppies at all is because they are so widely used.
--
jim knoble | jmknoble@jmknoble.cx | http://www.jmknoble.cx/
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