[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] initscripts changes

[RedShift]

Jan de Groot wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-04-07 at 00:24 +0200, RedShift wrote:
>> Thomas Bächler wrote:
>>> RedShift schrieb:
>>>> Thomas Bächler wrote:
>>>>> I am hacking initscripts and can't quite decide on two issues:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) I'd like to hardcode /dev/pts/ mounting in rc.sysinit.
>>>> What's wrong with putting that in fstab? What if I don't want to have 
>>>> that mounted? So instead of modified fstab I'd have to mess with 
>>>> rc.sysinit everytime the initscripts get upgraded? This is the same 
>>>> discussion as with moving lo to rc.sysinit instead of leaving it in 
>>>> rc.conf. Uterly pointless.
>>> The point is, everyone needs it mounted. Your system will be completely 
>>> useless without devpts (as it is without the lo interface).
>>>
>>> However, I know your opinion on these issues. Are there any rational 
>>> reasons not to hardcode devpts?
>>>
>> Yes. It's not logical. fstab was made for mounting filesystems, why even consider moving it to rc.sysinit? It's not because it makes the system unusable without it, that it should be moved to rc.sysinit. Why the change anyway? What's the benefit? Now we're going to see "Heeey stuff's being mounted that's not in fstab? wtf?". This change is just plain irrational, fstab was _specifically made_ for mounting filesystems. If you're going to hardcode stuff like that you might as well throw away fstab.
>>
>> Glenn
> 
> /proc and /sys are already hardcoded. About your system being broken
> without these filesystems mounted:
> - SSH (both server and client) won't work without devpts mounted
> - None of the virtual X terminal things will work without devpts mounted

It doesn't prevent the system from booting and having a working virtual console. So people can fix it if they decided to mess with the default entries in fstab. You guys just don't get it. This is about _principle_. And its not because there already are some filesystems hardcoded, that the rest should be. In fact, these should be moved from hardcoding to fstab. But that will probably never happen.

Wether these are "virtual" or "real" filesystems, it doesn't matter: the fs in fstab stands for FileSystem, period. If something needs to be mounted, it should go there.

This is exactly as what happened with the lo moving to rc.sysinit, hiding stuff so the newbies won't remove it because they think they don't need it. And the fact is, if you remove lo from the system, you can *still* boot your system and most stuff works without lo. So they can still fix lo if they removed it.

I'm sick and tired of complaining about issues like these, that shouldn't be discussed in the first place. Do you think I like complaining? Since when do we assume the user is stupid? All that's been accomplished here is create a big mess.

> 
> One sidenote though: I don't think users will break their system,
> the /dev/shm and /dev/pts mounts are in fstab during setup and I think
> most people don't remove them. I haven't seen bugs about "hey my system
> doesn't boot, but when I add these lines to /etc/fstab it works"
> 
> 
> 
>