Tim Hockin wrote:>>
On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 02:06:34PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
First of all, I'll be blunt: namespaces currently provide zero benefit in Linux, and virtually noone uses them. I have discussed this with Linus in the past, and neither one of us see namespaces as being worth
Let's get rid of them, then. Make life that much easier.
That's what the Linux community is doing, de facto. The Linux userspace simply is not set up to handle namespaces, and the autofs daemon is no exception. Consider such a simple thing as /etc/mtab - /proc/mounts which is necessary for most of the mount(8) functionality to work. It doesn't support namespaces and really cannot be made to.
namespace support in Linux is at the best a far-off future goal. It is one thing to put in infrastructure, especially since it has some other nice benefits; it's another thing to revamp all of userspace to use it; it's nowhere close and autofs is no exception.
This is clearly not 'all of userspace'. Autofs is an exception. As is /etc/mtab. The way I see it, automounting is a 'mount facility', as are namespaces. The two should be made to work together. Yes, mount(8) should probably be fixed one way or another as well due to /etc/mtab breakage. Why? Because it too is a mount facility.
There are a couple problems inherent with namespaces. Most of these are mount facilities that are broken such as mentioned above. They *should* be fixed to work nicely.
Other parts of userspace get confused with namespaces, eg: cron and atd. These programs clearly need infrastructure added that somehow allows for arbitrary namespace joining/saving. If you have suggestions for how we can solve this issue, please do let me know. I'm stumped :\ I'd be more than happy to discuss this with you.
One not-so-far fetched approach would be to associate cron/at jobs with automount configurations so that a namespace can be re-constructed at runtime.
-- Mike Waychison Sun Microsystems, Inc. 1 (650) 352-5299 voice 1 (416) 202-8336 voice mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sun.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NOTICE: The opinions expressed in this email are held by me, and may not represent the views of Sun Microsystems, Inc. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature
_______________________________________________ autofs mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://linux.kernel.org/mailman/listinfo/autofs
