Re: /etc/fstab.d yes or not

Attila Kinali
2012-01-20T14:54:09Z

On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:04:44 +0100
Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.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