Re: PROPOSAL for FHS revised : Mount points for CDs, floppies and a lien OS partitions.]
Anthony Towns wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 27, 2000 at 11:10:31AM -0700, Daniel Quinlan wrote:
> > Addressing the technical issue at hand, /mnt has been specified as a
> > single mount point for temporary use since the original FSSTND 1.0
> > released on February 14, 1994 (and it was used that way on every
> > distribution predating FSSTND).
>
> Is there an actual problem with Red Hat having subdirectories like
> /mnt/floppy? Or Debian having /floppy? At the absolute worst, the admin
> can just rm them and adjust it to suit.
As there are more and more non-techie Linux users, this could be
a problem. Remember, not all who will administer a Linux box would
be a good sysadm.
>
> We've already got:
>
> ] This directory is provided so that the system administrator may
> ] temporarily mount filesystems as needed. The content of this directory
> ] is a local issue and should not affect the manner in which any program
> ] is run.
>
> which seems to me to be both consistent with all the various existing
> practice (/mnt is used for temporary filesystems as needed, even if only
> by proxy via /mnt/floppy; and it's a *local issue* which doesn't require
> more standardisation).
>
> The only language that might be worth changing is:
>
> ] Software should never create or require special files or subdirectories
> ] in the root directory.
This would highly recommended.
>
> which seems to forbid /floppy (since it's created by the OS distributor's
> software).
>
> > Multiple directories under /mnt also conflicts with the
> > standard system administration practice of mounting on /mnt --
>
> But note that directories under /mnt is now a standard system
> administration practice too. And since the contents of /mnt *are* a
> local issue, there's no reason for the FHS, LSB, or third party vendors
> to worry about it at all.
However, remember the newbies....
>
> > However, it does seem that we could benefit from having a subdirectory
> > off of / or /var for temporary mount points, even if the structure
> > therein is loosely defined.
>
> Why not leave that to system administrators and OS distributors? If all
> we're going to say about something is "this may or may not be here, and
> its contents may or may not be important" it's barely even worth putting
> it in the spec. Even if someone rmdir's /mnt and only mounts filesystems
> under /var/local/screw-the-fhs, none of their software should have any
> reason whatsoever to break.
I would much rather have a fixed recommendation so if I have to
administer a Caldera box, a Slakware box, a RedHat box, etc.,
the mount points would be esentially the same, out of the box.
Cheers,
--
W. Wade, Hampton <whampton@staffnet.com>
On July 8, 1947, witnesses claim a spaceship with five aliens aboard
crashed on a sheep and cattle ranch outside Roswell, New Mexico.
On March 31, 1948, nine months later, Al Gore was born!
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