David Holland wrote: > On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 11:57:01AM -0500, Arnaud Lacombe wrote: > > [assorted negativity about removable volumes] > > I have one thing to say: > > Bollocks. > > Removable media weren't invented last year. There have been many > operating systems that supported removable media correctly, including > "real" OSes with VFS layers and write-back disk caching and the works. > Many of these systems date back 25 years or more. > > None of them, however, are Unix-derived. It is a disgrace that > removable media handling in Unix has remained broken all this time. > > This is what needs to be done: > > (1) Automatically mounting media upon insertion creates a > configuration management problem. Where do you mount the new volume, > and how does this interact with existing config practices and > /etc/fstab? If someone who understands this problem (which apparently > excludes the freedesktop.org folks) can straighten it out, there's no > particular further difficulty with mounting. > > (2) Unmounting on removal for devices that don't have a door lock or > some other mechanism to allow the OS to sync before ejecting requires > a method to send the user on the console a nastygram of the form > "REINSERT THAT AND WAIT FIVE SECONDS. OR ELSE." There is nothing > difficult about this except that it involves writing an X program, > although a more scalable solution requires a bit more integration with > desktop goo. The reason this hasn't happened yet is that, AFAICT, the > desktop folks don't understand what's required and the kernel folks > don't really care enough to bother, or fight with the desktop folks > over the color of the bikeshed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H window frame. > > (3) Fixing the buffer cache code and whatever else is involved so it > doesn't choke when an unexpected eject occurs is, though not entirely > trivial, a SMOP. > > (4) Fixing file system code so you can't panic or own the kernel by > inserting a corrupt volume is, though not trivial, also perfectly > straightforward. > > All of this might have got done 12-14 years ago, too, except that > floppies disappeared just around the time a critical mass of people > started using Unix-derived OSes on machines that historically > supported floppy drives and where floppy drives were expected to work > properly. > > -- > David A. Holland > dholland%netbsd.org@localhost The truth has been said, I agree with every word. -- When in doubt, use brute force. Adam Hoka <ahoka%NetBSD.org@localhost> Adam Hoka <ahoka%MirBSD.de@localhost> Adam Hoka <adam.hoka%gmail.com@localhost>
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