On Wed, Dec 06, 2000 at 03:00:06PM -0500, Neal H Walfield wrote: > > Maybe we can make translators register with /etc/mtab, like processes > > register with proc. ext2fs would register with /etc/mtab, so would > > ufs, but not necessarily ftpfs or tarfs (whenever that's done). > > You want filesystems which have not yet been started (but are mounted in > the Unix sense) to be listed. For example, you boot and you have > your root file system mounted on /. Mounted, right? Then you have > /home/me/extra-space be a passive translator. It will not be started to > be translated until after it has been first accessed (e.g. once you log in > and do an ls), however, for all intents and purposes, it is mounted but > it will never have had the chance to register with the mtab translator.
Would you really want that? I may want to keep passive translators on /mnt/c and /mnt/d which are FAT drives. But I don't use them very often, and I don't want locate/slocate polluting its database with filenames from those drives. If you have an automounter in linux you have the same effect, if the partitions are not used, they are not mounted and hence are not listed in mtab. But for all intents are purposes they are "mounted" since all you have to do to access them is to change to the appropriate directory. Another option that seems more like what you're proposing is keeping a persistent registry of all used filesystems. Come to think of it, it would be very much like /etc/fstab. But fstab is already used for mounting partitions at boot time, so what if you want some of the fs translators to stay passive until you use them? Igor
