Anthony Towns wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 27, 2000 at 11:10:31AM -0700, Daniel Quinlan wrote: > > Addressing the technical issue at hand, /mnt has been specified as a > > single mount point for temporary use since the original FSSTND 1.0 > > released on February 14, 1994 (and it was used that way on every > > distribution predating FSSTND). > > Is there an actual problem with Red Hat having subdirectories like > /mnt/floppy? Or Debian having /floppy? At the absolute worst, the admin > can just rm them and adjust it to suit. As there are more and more non-techie Linux users, this could be a problem. Remember, not all who will administer a Linux box would be a good sysadm. > > We've already got: > > ] This directory is provided so that the system administrator may > ] temporarily mount filesystems as needed. The content of this directory > ] is a local issue and should not affect the manner in which any program > ] is run. > > which seems to me to be both consistent with all the various existing > practice (/mnt is used for temporary filesystems as needed, even if only > by proxy via /mnt/floppy; and it's a *local issue* which doesn't require > more standardisation). > > The only language that might be worth changing is: > > ] Software should never create or require special files or subdirectories > ] in the root directory. This would highly recommended. > > which seems to forbid /floppy (since it's created by the OS distributor's > software). > > > Multiple directories under /mnt also conflicts with the > > standard system administration practice of mounting on /mnt -- > > But note that directories under /mnt is now a standard system > administration practice too. And since the contents of /mnt *are* a > local issue, there's no reason for the FHS, LSB, or third party vendors > to worry about it at all. However, remember the newbies.... > > > However, it does seem that we could benefit from having a subdirectory > > off of / or /var for temporary mount points, even if the structure > > therein is loosely defined. > > Why not leave that to system administrators and OS distributors? If all > we're going to say about something is "this may or may not be here, and > its contents may or may not be important" it's barely even worth putting > it in the spec. Even if someone rmdir's /mnt and only mounts filesystems > under /var/local/screw-the-fhs, none of their software should have any > reason whatsoever to break. I would much rather have a fixed recommendation so if I have to administer a Caldera box, a Slakware box, a RedHat box, etc., the mount points would be esentially the same, out of the box.
Cheers, -- W. Wade, Hampton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> On July 8, 1947, witnesses claim a spaceship with five aliens aboard crashed on a sheep and cattle ranch outside Roswell, New Mexico. On March 31, 1948, nine months later, Al Gore was born!
