Re: FreeBSD, FHS, and /mnt/cdrom

[Scott W]

Frank Murphy wrote:

The folks at the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) are discussing
(again) where directories for recurring temporary mount points should go.
Recurring temporary mount points are for things like cdroms, floppies,
and digital cameras as well as HD partitions from other OSes (like MS
Windows).
Red Hat started putting these in /mnt (e.g. /mnt/cdrom), but that totally
breaks compatibility with the BSDs, which have specified /mnt as an empty
directory for ad hoc temporary mounts. SuSE has started putting these in
/media, and now folks on the FHS list would like to know what people in
the BSDs' communities would prefer.
I imagine your answer will be something like "We don't care; do what you
want," but I would like to present the different ideas, and perhaps you
would prefer one.
So, please put these in the order of most to least preferred, and say why
you like or dislike any of them.
- All mount points in / (e.g. /cdrom, /camera, /windows/C)  <- current
FreeBSD standard
 

OK for a small number of devices, but not down the road when the 
possibility for a sizeable number of transiently mounted devices could 
clutter up / .  It would be 'less terrible' if a few 'classes' of mounts 
were created as part of the standard, with actual devices/filesystems 
below each, although the potential to overly clutter / still exists.

Example:
/audio
/audio/ipod
/audio/generic
/video/
/video/sonycam
/video/generic
etc...actually, I think I'm still less than crazy about this one ;-)

- All mount points in /mnt (e.g. /mnt/cdrom, /mnt/camera, /mnt/windows/C)
<- breaks
     FreeBSD standard for an empty /mnt
 

Don't like it, as others have stated, too many of us are in the habit of 
having an 'empty' /mnt , unless we chose to create subdirectories, and I 
often mount something I know will be used short-term only at /mnt and 
use it as a single point, instant mount point for 'whatever' I'm 
mounting temporarily.

- Anyplace at all
 

Nope.  This just leads to obnoxious workarounds and/or additional 
configuration files for developing software that needs to use either.  
Again, using a 'device class heirarchy' comes to mind, like a 'whereis 
mountd', where a program could ask for the location of a specified class 
of device, and then in turn scan any mounted devices, but this one's a 
BIT out of scope of the FS project ;-)

- Anyplace but /mnt (i.e. what the FHS 2.2 currently specifies)
 

K, but same as above, although I suppose it depends if they are looking 
to only define a single top level directory, or possibly more than one, 
eg subdirectory/mount points?

- Anyplace but / or /mnt (e.g. /vol/cdrom, /var/mnt/camera,
/media/windows/C)
 

As long as it's consistent and not ALL of the above for the given 
devices ;-)  Again, prefer a single dir entry into /, which can grow as 
need be...

     (some suggestions have been /media, /mounts, /vol, /var/mnt,
     and /var/tmp/removable. Others?)
 

/trans = transient
/media (SuSe way) is OK but possibly limiting (thinking of video and 
other devices that may possibly be mountable instead of accessing via 
/dev/*)
/vol I'm OK with but fairly sure it's being used somewhere 
already...Solaris?
/tfs = temp (or transient) file systems, but doesn't exactly roll off 
the keyboard..
/fs = easy to type, easy to remember (filesystems), OK by me ;-)

/tmp is already taken, drat ;-)

Scott

Thanks letting us know how you feel about this,

Frank Murphy

 



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