Hi. On Sat, 29 Oct 2016 15:09:09 +0100 Brian <a...@cityscape.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sat 29 Oct 2016 at 15:54:59 +0300, Reco wrote: > > > On Sat, 29 Oct 2016 08:16:18 -0400 > > rhkra...@gmail.com wrote: > > > > > I'll say that the wiki page gave no hint as to which of the three options > > > to > > > install, or any hint that one might work better than another. > > > > The page is describing 'Producing an automated install of a Debian > > operating system from a USB stick', to quote it. For such an advanced > > task it can be safely assumed IMO that the person who's implementing the > > instruction is familiar with the basic concepts of a 'file system' or > > 'mounting'. > > The question of providing guidance on which of the three tools to use is > an interesting one. As far as possible a wiki page like this one should > stick to facts and technical matters; venturing into the area of opinion > isn't the way to go, IMO. Do any of these tools have a distinct > technical advantage for the purpose of installing GRUB is the question > to ask and answer? If the answer is "no" don't they deserve equal > exposure? No advantage that I'm aware of. In fact, the whole paragraph could be shortened to already existing text: If you are working within one of the desktop environments it is very likely the mounting can be done from he file manager which comes with it. This is because udisks2 will be on the system. A label will possibly be used for the mount point. > The tools exist and all can be assumed to work. The choice of which one > to use is up to the user. For many users a couple of clicks on a desktop > will get the stick mounted; others might like the challenge of using a > new tool. My point exactly. Why bother naming all these tools if it all comes down to "you might use your file manager to do this part for you as well"? > A few might say - "Hey, interesting, never knew about that; > I'll give it a go". And then go on to use it in another context. True, but why stop here? Author(s?) of the page might mention usbmount and supermount as well. > > It can be argued (again IMO) that the 3 tools proposed are not the best > > ones available for the task, or downright redundant due to availability > > of mount(8), but all three mentioned tools are in fact are links to [2]. > > Broken ones (for me at least), but they are links to manpages for the > > mentioned tools. Surely a manpage can be viewed as a suitable source of > > hints you're referring to. > > mount is a root-only tool; the others aren't. Need I say more? Yes, I believe you do. The page mentions 'Check the mount point from within the fie manager or with the command "mount"' (curious typo btw), rightfully assuming that one does not need to be root to do that. The bottom of the page mentions at least one operation that needs to be performed as root, so why exactly mounting USB stick as root is somehow a bad thing in this context? > The Debian manpages site is broken and awaiting relocation to a new > host. Here I can only assume that this useful service was available at the time that page was written. > > > Of course, > > > until this issue came up, no one may have expected one to work better > > > than > > > another, so then someone reading that page could, quite appropriately, > > > try one > > > and not the others, and assume that there was no more useful information > > > on > > > the page. > > > > I agree that the page provides unnecessary choice in this regard, and > > for the sake of clarity of this topic [3] would be more appropriate. > > Fair enough. But why not udisks2? After all, it will already be on many > machines. No reason, really. pmount was mentioned first on the page. Reco
