The problem is that AFAIK other auto mounters are user-space applications that work by periodically checking to see if a mount point is no longer used, and if so then unmounting it. Typically this check occurs at 30 second intervals (although I understand that most allow you to configure this timeout). What this means in a practical sense is that your CD (as an example) would not be unmounted until 30 seconds after you finish using it.
Supermount OTOH is a kernel utility that auomatically mounts the device when you access its mount point, and unmounts as soon as you've finished using it. It basically does this by hooking into various kernel routines responsible for managing the internal file descriptor tables. The problem with supermount is that these hooks are spread over a number of places and they often have very subtle impacts on the rest of the kernel (impacts that seem to change with each new kernel version) that tends to screw things up. A significant PITA. It would help if Linus integrated supermount into the kernel, however I understand that he is not happy with the necessary patches - given the problems which Mandrake has had I don't blame him. I'm not aware of anything else that does the same sort of job as supermount, but I think someone else posted something a couple of days ago. I'll need to have a look in the list archives to refresh my memory. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Fernandez" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 11:28 AM Subject: Re: [Cooker] supermount or alternate fs mounter ? > Robert Denier wrote: > > >You may want to check this but I think > > > >supermount -i disable > > > >will magically change fstab to get rid of supermount options. (Remember if > >you mess up fstab your machine may not boot.) > > > >Clearly you now have to mount everything by hand, but considering I use a cd > >at most every few days, it really doesn't bother me, although thats just my > >case. > > > > > I know that you can disable supermount. But my point was for the future > updates/9.1. Mandrake distribution needs an auto-mounter, especially for > newbies and people who do not want to have to mount manually. Now the > question is : since there are alternatives to supermount, like autofs or > AMD (the BSD automounter), why not replace the problematic supermount by > another solution ? > > Eric > > >
