Re: PROPOSAL for FHS revised : Mount points for CDs, floppies and alien OS partitions.]

[Jeffrey Watts <watts@jayhawks.net>]

On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, Thorsten Kukuk wrote:

> And what is with Solaris ? And with HP-UX ? They all don't have
> /mnt/cdrom.

I'm confused.  I thought we were defining Linux?  I know that the FHS is
meant to be applicable to other Unixes, but why are we trying to follow
commercial Unix?  Lord knows I've seen some _awful_ ideas get implemented
in Solaris, IRIX, and DEC Unix.  Should we follow their direction?  Or
should we set our own path, based on technical merit and practicality?

> Why is it the best solution ? Only because some Linux distributions
> have it ? /mnt has a special meaning in the Unix world since years.
> Yes, FHS should define the future, but not break with the past. And if
> FHS should be for all Unix, we also need to take care for the other
> Unix, not only some few Linux distributions.

Well, often one must break with the past to move to the future.  I don't
know about the goal of the FHS being for "all Unix".  Considering that I
haven't (and I may be very wrong here) seen any conversation from
commercial Unix vendors on the FHS, how can we define what they should
use?  If they are not involved in the discussion, it is pointless to
define a filesystem standard for them.  I would think that the wisest
course, given our limited resources, is to define Linux but keep the other
Unixes in the corner of our eye.

> We need to find a new directory, which is not historical in use by
> something other. Don't break to much.

I think that having a /mnt and /mount (for example) is kind of redundant.  
I think it will cause some user confusion.  Again, do we need a directory
off of root that has no other purpose but to be a temporary mount point?  
Wouldn't it be more elegant to have a single directory for all
non-essential mount points (in other words, not a remote /usr or /opt or
whatever)?

How many applications would be broken by redefining /mnt as a directory of
mount points?  Or defining a new directory like /mounts and getting rid of
/mnt?  I wasn't aware of any applications that were written to use /mnt?


Thanks for your patience in this conversation, I've only been lurking on
the lsb-spec list for a couple of months now.  Please forgive me if the
arguments that I'm bringing up have been beaten to death in the past.  If
so, just let me know and I'll shut up.  :-)

Thanks,
Jeffrey.

o-----------------------------------o
| Jeffrey Watts                     |
| watts@jayhawks.net         o-----------------------------------------o
| Systems Programmer         | "I had a linguistics professor who      |
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                             |  -- Jeff Stilson                        |
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