Supermount is not quite the same. It takes autofs a step further. If you
read up on the patch information you will see that many think it is a great
feature and many hope that it will make it into the kernel proper rather than
be a patch.
Supermount makes using the supermount volume absolutely painless in all ways.
If you place a cd into your supermount cdrom and then just cd to the
/mnt/cdrom drive and do an "ls" or whatever, it automagically mounts and
lists what's there. You can then, if you wish, simply hit the eject button
and it will actually eject the cd (unmounting it automagically) without
complaining about it being mounted or requiring you to manually unmount it
first. The same goes with zip drives, floppies, and so forth.
For a game, for instance, in which you may have multiple cds to exchange when
playing, this is a godsend. You simply hit the eject button and pull out the
old cd and stick in the new one and close the drawer. Done. No system
complaints, no extra typing or other steps.
It is a huge convenience and keystroke or mousestroke saver to use
supermount. Saying that this is of no value is the same as saying that there
is no value to GUIs or to using/having mice/trackballs, etc, and so forth.
If you can save keystrokes, etc, and ease the actual use and speed of using
your system, it is a good thing. Supermount does this beyond what autofs can
do.
The kernel mailing list has messages in it calling for supermount to be
incorporated into the kernel rather than supplied as an addon patch. One of
the features common to Mandrake releases (except for recent Cooker versions)
is supermount.
Here is a message from Alan Cox regarding supermount - somewhat dated because
a supermount patch was produced for the 2.4.0 kernel and Mandrake has used it
in their 2.4.0 thru 2.4.4 kernels (don't know about 2.4.5):
Alan Cox wrote:
> > Is there any possibility of making Linux handle file systems on
> > floppies like MSDOS, so that there is no need to explicitly mount and
> > unmount a floppy drive in order to access floppies through the file
> > system?
> There is a thing called 'supermount'. It needs more hands to port it to
> 2.3.x and it needs a very good review of the code to fix remaining
> questionable habits (or rewriting as a stackable fs). The stuff needed is
> out there however
Supermount DOES belong in the kernel, not as a special addon patch. It
should actually be a default behavior for any desktop-like system. There may
be many valid arguments against it for servers, certainly, but beyond that?
No.
On Saturday 28 July 2001 12:12 pm, DM wrote:
> how is supermount different from autofs?
> doesnt autofs/automounter achieve the same thing?
> and yes, there is really no option for supermount on
> the new kernel.
>
> --- Praedor Tempus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Err...unfortunately, supermount support does not
> > exist in this kernel. I
> > have downloaded it and have xconfig up right now and
> > there is no option to
> > enable supermount.
> >
> >
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > On Fri, 27 Jul 2001, Praedor Tempus wrote:
> > > > Up until the 2.4.6 kernel (I am not certain
> >
> > about 2.4.5 because I never
> >
> > > > tried building it) from Mandrake, when one did
> >
> > the "make xconfig" there
> >
> > > > was an option to turn on support for supermount
> >
> > in the menus. With
> >
> > > > 2.4.6, this disappeared and the kernel did not
> >
> > support supermount.
> >
> > --
> > Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in
> > vain.
>
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--
Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
