linux-kernel - Re: /etc/fstab.d yes or not

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Date:	Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:43:09 +0100
From:	Attila Kinali <attila@...ali.ch>
To:	Karel Zak <kzak@...hat.com>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
	util-linux@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: /etc/fstab.d yes or not

On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:04:44 +0100
Karel Zak <kzak@...hat.com> wrote:

>  I'd like to add support for /etc/fstab.d to libmount. The library is
>  currently used by mount, umount and mount.nfs. The goal is to use it
>  on more places.
> 
>  The /etc/fstab.d directory has been requested by people who maintains
>  large number of mountpoints etc.
> 
>  The directory is not replacement for /etc/fstab, it's additional place
>  where you can describe your filesystems.

It might not be my place to say anthing about this, as I am just
a mere mortal .... 

But I'd like to express my concerns on this. In the years i've been
using Linux, the system has become a very complex beast. While in the 
beginning I could just dig trough a couple of scripts to figure out
how a certain system worked, or more likely why it didn't work...
nowadays i have to have knowledge of a dozen of complex interacting
daemons to figure out why gedit refuses to edit a simple text file.

Complexity is added everywhere, to make a few corner cases a little
bit more simple. Making it more difficult for the 99% who do
not care about these corner cases. This in turn makes Linux this
opaque system that only a handfull of selected can understand, who
invest their whole life to the understanding of its many subsystems.
If this continues like this, in a decade or two, Linux will become
like windows. A system nobody clearly understands, which somehow works,
but sometimes not.. and nobody knows why.

Hence, i would like to ask you to consider not adding /etc/fstab.d
unless there is a very good reason to do it. And "to make it simpler
for people who have a lot of mountpoints" is IMHO not a good reason.
How many mountpoints must one use that a single file becomes a problem?

			Attila Kinali

-- 
The trouble with you, Shev, is you don't say anything until you've saved
up a whole truckload of damned heavy brick arguments and then you dump
them all out and never look at the bleeding body mangled beneath the heap
		-- Tirin, The Dispossessed, U. Le Guin
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