Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 11 Jul 1997 19:12:26 -0500 | From | Miguel de Icaza <> | Subject | Re: kernel-managed /dev, revisited |
| |
> What if you've got filesystems that don't take labels?
Well, that will be an inconvenience for those who happen to not use the one true file system in all of their disks.
But seriously, this feature will not make the life any different to those users. In the other hand, it would allow a lot of Linux users to move freely their volume-labeled file systems.
What you suggest is equivalent to not implementing a SPARC feature in the SPARC port just because Intel users would not take advantage of it.
> What if you've got _two_ usr filesystems (my case: a > RedHat "working" system, and a "test-drive" Debian one)?
Well, you should be able to do e2label /dev/sda2 "redhat/usr"; e2label /dev/sdb2 "debian/usr" and modify your setup files accordingly. Linux installation programs would let you select a proper label at install time.
> What if some of the partitions aren't filesystems but just raw > devices (like a floppy you simply tar over), or before mkfs-ing it?
Well, what is wrong with those? You can still access your devices trought the device files, I am just suggesting to add to the kernel support for labels on the file systems. (or to a user-level daemon or to the mount tool or to any combination of those).
> Or filesystems/devices that need to load a module to access?
This would work by a piece of code that knows about the layout of the different file systems supported. You do not need to load the file system code into the kernel to figure out what kind of file system you are dealing with. For instance, some twisted hacker could probably make an /etc/magic entry for recognizing file systems :-).
Cheers, Miguel.
| |