> I wouldn't want passive translators with a backing store show up in > /etc/mtab, so I think volunatry and dynamic registration by the servers > would be the way to go (note that enforcing such a policy is not useful, we > already enfore registration with proc for user level filesystems).
Thomas and I discussed many ideas around this a long time ago. The conclusion that we came to is that the only purposes we have for anything like mtab (or its in-core equivalents on other unix systems) is to have a list of "interesting filesystems" for df to show you by default. Perhaps also you might like something a la unix's mount with no args to show you the fsysopts output for each interesting filesystem. On unix, only root can designate a filesystem as interesting so that df will print it, and this is done by the explicit action of running mount. So for the Hurd, there doesn't seem to be a reason for anything other than a hand-maintained file to list the "interesting" filesystems. Since /etc/fstab is already just such a file that is used for fsck at boot time, it seems reasonable enough to use that for df too. > > 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, > > Not on the Hurd. We use it for fsck only. And df.
