From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Nov 4 07:19:40 1995 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id HAA25962 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 4 Nov 1995 07:19:40 -0800 Received: from eel.dataplex.net (EEL.DATAPLEX.NET [199.183.109.245]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id HAA25918 for ; Sat, 4 Nov 1995 07:19:30 -0800 Received: from [199.183.109.242] (cod [199.183.109.242]) by eel.dataplex.net (8.6.11/8.6.9) with SMTP id JAA15755; Sat, 4 Nov 1995 09:19:03 -0600 X-Sender: rkw@shark.dataplex.net Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sat, 4 Nov 1995 09:19:08 -0600 To: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey) From: rkw@dataplex.net (Richard Wackerbarth) Subject: Re: CD automount and things Cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard), hackers@freebsd.org Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk At 8:42 AM 11/4/95, Greg Lehey wrote: >Still, I've got more important things to worry about. I just don't >like seeing the UNIX world diverge too much, and so I'm a bit more >conservative in my approach to this kind of solution. So your position is that we should forever carry the burden of poor design simply because "they have always ..." and we must remain compatable. I vote for improved design. Who knows, the others might just copy us. In the fstab case, I think the "compatability" issue is reasonably addressed as long as we recognize and accept the "conventional" syntax. We can afford a few more bytes in the /etc/rc file to terminate the boot with a descriptive message eg. "Restart aborted - Required Filesystem Not Ready". That way the user will understand what happened and either work around the problem or RTFM and do it "right". I would also suggest that the distribution fstab include a sample entry with the optional flag so that the user who edits the file is likely to notice the option even if he fails to RTFM. ---- Richard Wackerbarth rkw@dataplex.net