Re: [PATCH 3/3] autofs: add ignore mount option

Andrew Morton
2019-01-30T04:58:15Z

On Wed, 30 Jan 2019 10:07:15 +0800 Ian Kent <raven@themaw.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 2019-01-29 at 17:16 -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Sat, 12 Jan 2019 08:00:40 +0800 Ian Kent <raven@themaw.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Add an autofs file system mount option that can be used to provide
> > > a generic indicator to applications that the mount entry should be
> > > ignored when displaying mount information.
> >
> > What is the reason for adding this feature?
>
> In other OSes that provide autofs and that provide a mount list
> to user space based on the kernel mount list a no-op mount option
> ("ignore" is the one use on the most common OS) is allowed so that
> autofs file system users can optionally use it.
>
> The idea is that it be used by user space programs to exclude
> autofs mounts from consideration when reading the mounts list.
>
> Prior to the change to link /etc/mtab to /proc/self/mounts all
> I needed to do to achieve this was to use mount(2) and not update
> the mtab but now that no longer works.
>
> I know the symlinking happened a long time ago and I considered
> doing this then but, at the time I couldn't remember the commonly
> used option name and thought persuading the various utility
> maintainers would be too hard.
>
> But now I have a RHEL request to do this for compatibility for a
> widely used product so I want to go ahead with it and try and
> enlist the help of some utility package maintainers.
>
> Clearly, without the option nothing can be done so it's at least
> a start.

OK. I guess I can just paste the above into the changelog.

Also, Documentation/filesystems/autofs*.txt are owed an update?