Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: rfc: openrc mount service prototype

[Ian Stakenvicius]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

On 30/07/15 01:55 AM, Duncan wrote:
> Patrick McLean posted on Wed, 29 Jul 2015 15:35:02 -0700 as
> excerpted:
>
>> On Thu, 30 Jul 2015 01:11:30 +0300 Alon Bar-Lev
>> <alonbl@g.o> wrote:
>>
>>> On 29 July 2015 at 23:20, William Hubbs <williamh@g.o>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> so that there is a better idea out there of what I'm talking
>>>> about, the OpenRC github repository now has a mount-service
>>>> branch.
>>>
>>> But I still trying to figure out why do we need to keep fstab
>>> around. It is pure legacy.
>>>
>>>
>> On what planet is fstab pure legacy? Many utilities use it and
>> expect it to exist. For example the ability to do "mount /foo"
>> requires a properly configured fstab file (also mount -a).
>>

I think there are two meanings of the word legacy here.

#1, /etc/fstab on linux is not legacy, and I don't think anyone here
(except possibly for WilliamH as I can't actually tell from his
statements) has been calling it 'legacy' in this context.

#2, if openrc implements new system mounting which doesn't touch fstab
at all, then by definition /etc/fstab and init scripts that leverage
commands that use it exclusively (old localmount and netmount) are
legacy -- you have the legacy method, and you have the new method.
This is still in the openrc context though, and not in the overall
context of linux.  Alon Bar-Lev's comments are definitely using legacy
in this context IMO, and he's right there technically would not be a
need for /etc/fstab on his system with openrc mounting things the new
way that has been suggested, so long as he doesn't intend to use any
tools or commands that expect /etc/fstab in userspace.

Back to practical matters:

SO, because /etc/fstab is not legacy (see #1), the new mount system in
openrc needs to be aware of and honour /etc/fstab contents.  I've no
idea how to do this, to be honest, as it seems like a clusterfsck to
deal with properly.

Technically we could require users using openrc from now on to make
symlinks for every mountpoint they want to have mounted at boottime,
but that's IMO an unacceptable amount of work for something that's
never been needed (and IMO never should be -needed-) on linux.  As
such, IMO, /etc/fstab should not be turned into a legacy (see #2)
configuration file by openrc.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2

iF4EAREIAAYFAlW6TakACgkQAJxUfCtlWe2CNQEAmowci81PZYfRr2BJMLCusXEI
MiewLIGDmQqhUc1qnEcA/RrvacCqoBTYIzUzbYuxaUgD/4sdaGPZ70WZYupvIsIO
=Gr62
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----