From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753543Ab2ATOyJ (ORCPT ); Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:54:09 -0500 Received: from mail.opencsw.org ([82.220.5.51]:56770 "EHLO mail.opencsw.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752646Ab2ATOyH (ORCPT ); Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:54:07 -0500 X-Greylist: delayed 656 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:54:07 EST Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:43:09 +0100 From: Attila Kinali To: Karel Zak Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, util-linux@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: /etc/fstab.d yes or not Message-Id: <20120120154309.3ae5f9e4a8f55c477dc423ab@kinali.ch> In-Reply-To: <20120120140444.GC13157@x2.net.home> References: <20120120140444.GC13157@x2.net.home> Organization: GEHIRN X-Mailer: Sylpheed 3.2.0beta5 (GTK+ 2.24.8; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:04:44 +0100 Karel Zak wrote: > I'd like to add support for /etc/fstab.d to libmount. The library is > currently used by mount, umount and mount.nfs. The goal is to use it > on more places. > > The /etc/fstab.d directory has been requested by people who maintains > large number of mountpoints etc. > > The directory is not replacement for /etc/fstab, it's additional place > where you can describe your filesystems. It might not be my place to say anthing about this, as I am just a mere mortal .... But I'd like to express my concerns on this. In the years i've been using Linux, the system has become a very complex beast. While in the beginning I could just dig trough a couple of scripts to figure out how a certain system worked, or more likely why it didn't work... nowadays i have to have knowledge of a dozen of complex interacting daemons to figure out why gedit refuses to edit a simple text file. Complexity is added everywhere, to make a few corner cases a little bit more simple. Making it more difficult for the 99% who do not care about these corner cases. This in turn makes Linux this opaque system that only a handfull of selected can understand, who invest their whole life to the understanding of its many subsystems. If this continues like this, in a decade or two, Linux will become like windows. A system nobody clearly understands, which somehow works, but sometimes not.. and nobody knows why. Hence, i would like to ask you to consider not adding /etc/fstab.d unless there is a very good reason to do it. And "to make it simpler for people who have a lot of mountpoints" is IMHO not a good reason. How many mountpoints must one use that a single file becomes a problem? Attila Kinali -- The trouble with you, Shev, is you don't say anything until you've saved up a whole truckload of damned heavy brick arguments and then you dump them all out and never look at the bleeding body mangled beneath the heap -- Tirin, The Dispossessed, U. Le Guin