> > Right now it is actually impossible to conclusively determine a > > filesystem-relative path in the presence of bind (and possibly move) > > mounts. This is highly desirable to be able to do in contexts that > > involve non-Linux (or not-the-current-instance-of-Linux) accesses to the > > filesystem, e.g. other filesystems or bootloaders. > > It's also highly desirable if you want to be able to run a backup :) one > would desire to back up the filesystem as a whole, not some bind mount > of one directory out of it (and backing up both is needless > duplication). > > So I applaud this and would be an immediate user, no matter what format > is chosen, as long as we can tell what is mounted where. > > (As an aside, it would be nice if mount(8) could supply (a limited > amount of) extra (arbitrary?) textual options to the kernelq, > specifically so that mount options which are only interpreted by > userspace programs, like `user' and the quota options, could appear in > /proc/mounts. That way we could finally ditch bloody /etc/mtab for good. I'm working on this actually. See this (and related patches) in -mm: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.22-rc4/2.6.22-rc4-mm2/broken-out/unprivileged-mounts-add-user-mounts-to-the-kernel.patch This solves the "user=" thing, but is not a generic solution for other options. And I'm wondering if there is really a need for that. Which quota options are you thinking about? Some quota options (e.g. for ext*) seem to be already present in /proc/mounts. There's also "loop=", but that's not really a per-mount option, but a per-loop-device option, so it could be stored separately under /var. Do you know any other options which are only in /etc/mtab, and need to be stored along with each mount? Miklos - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
