I see more than one facet on this issue: 1 - installers (I think about RedHat here because that's what I'm familiar with) can basically do as they please, as long as they do it in a ramdisk so their choice goes away in a puff; 2 - application programs are basically asking "where is your cdrom", so they need a standard path (real applications use getmntent(), I am thinking about system commands and startup scripts, where you set up the mtab); 3 - distributions installing for the first time might use a default place; 4 - distributions upgrading should obey the symlinks as 2 above (which on a brief throught seems to mean leave them alone unless dangling); 5 - system admins are free to do what they please as long as they update the links.
Example first-time installation: /mnt/fhs/cdrom -> /mnt/redhat-default/cdrom /mnt/redhat-default/cdrom Opinionated sysadmin does: /mnt/fhs/cdrom -> /romcd and everything should work, including next RedHat upgrade. One single point of update, and it seems you can write shell scripts, Tcl/Tk frontends and no end of GUIs around this. Now, as someone suggested, /mnt/fhs is likely to get crowded just like /dev, since someone might have more than one cdrom (what about changers, of which I have no experience ?). Maybe I'm barking at the wrong tree, since this seems FHS territory. Davide Bolcioni -- #include <disclaimer.h> // Standard disclaimer applies -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version 3.1 GE/IT d+ s:+ a C+++$ UL++++$ P>++ L++@ E@ W+ N++@ o? K? w++ O- M+ V? PS PE@ V+ PGP>+ t++ 5? X R+ tv- b+++ DI? D G e+++ h r y? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
