Fedora core suggestions

Kevin Kofler kevin.kofler at chello.at
Tue Apr 25 19:54:36 UTC 2006


Leszek Matok <Lam <at> Lam.pl> writes:
> > Maybe that's just me, but even on my single-user system, I want my VFAT 
> > partitions mounted at predictable, easy-to-remember locations (/c for 
C:, /d 
> > for D:, /e for E: and /f for F:)
> 1. You can add any partition to fstab in almost any location you want
> (you can't use /dev/null for example, but other than existing files,
> you're really free to do what you want). Anaconda has a GUI for it and
> it worked every time I tried.

I know. This is exactly why I think fstab is a better solution for fixed disks 
than automounting. What is missing is a GUI tool to edit fstab after 
installation. I don't need it, but less experienced people would have a use for 
it.

> 2. It's hard or impossible to know which partition is Windows D: and
> which is E:, because:
> a) newer Windows versions allow you to change the drives letters on the
> fly, you'd have to mount the boot partition (and know which one is
> that), read some files from it (when the settings are stored),
> understand their format and then remount partitions in appropriate
> locations, that's hard I guess, and
> b) if you have two Windows versions (i.e. 98 and XP), they can see the
> drives with different letters, so which one is more important?

Which is why I believe letting the user set things up to his/her liking is 
better than try to automatically guess a location. By definition, fixed disks 
rarely change, why'd you want to figure out the mount point from scratch again 
at each boot? (This causes both unnecessary work during bootup and the infamous 
unpredictable mount points.)

I don't mean to offend the people working on automatic mounting, their efforts 
are very appreciated (having to mount floppies, CDs, USB sticks or whatever by 
hand after plugging it in is so yesterday), but I think trying to use the same 
scheme for fixed disks is oversimplifying things. "If all you have is a hammer, 
every problem starts looking a lot like a nail." Trying to hammer in a screw is 
a bad idea. ;-)

        Kevin Kofler




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