Date: Wed, 01 Nov 1995 14:22:25 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> Cc: grog@lemis.de, hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: More nits Message-ID: <1840.815264545@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 01 Nov 1995 15:06:57 MST." <199511012206.PAA00366@phaeton.artisoft.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> Clearly if you put it in your fstab without "noauto", you thought the > "GIFs Galore CDROM" was critical to your use of the system. > > 8-). We're not actually having the same argument here.. :-) I'm not talking about what a skilled hacker can or would do, I'm trying to determine the best *default* behavior for Joe Random User who probably doesn't even know what an fstab file *is*! If you can see it from that perspective, then the problem quickly becomes quite obvious: If you put noauto in there, the user doesn't see a CDROM anywhere and calls us for help. He has to type `mount /cdrom' explicitly to see his CD, which is entirely counter-intuitive for someone from a Windows 95 background who's used to the CD just *being there* when the system comes up. If I don't add noauto, then the CD is always where he expects it (unless there's none in the drive, in which case he has to go the extra step of figuring it out) but then his whole system falls over if there's none in the drive. Feh! > Actually, I'm running a system where if a device is detected, it's passed > to a mount, and each file system is asked if it wants the device, and if > it does, then it's mounted relative to the value in the /etc/fstab, or > if it's not in the /etc/fstab, it's not mounted. Hmmmmm. That's sort of nice. I guess we'd better get you -current, eh? :-) > So the /etc/fstab is a device-name-to-mount-point mapping table which > is used if a device is detected, not a list of operations that need to > be performed. YES! > It has to do with what the hell belongs in a partitioning tool, and > writing a boot manager is one of the things that damn well doesn't. This is a purists perspective, and I thought all the purists left the PC world, gagging in disgust, about 10 years ago! :-) As far as Joe User is concerned again, sticking a boot manager on a drive and chosing that FreeBSD should live with Linux (in the same editor) is one and the same. And as far as doing this "right" so that future generations won't suffer, well, I see doing it right as a far more significant task than anything you've outlined here. You're basically suggesting that we do the hack more correctly, but it's still a hack! It's not even a hack that's in fdisk - it should, by rights, be entirely abstracted by libdisk and we weren't even really talking about that anyway - all that's at issue here is how the user interface is presented! Jordan
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?1840.815264545>