Subject: Re: FFS journal (mounting just a sub-directory from a filesystem)
To: NetBSD Kernel Technical Discussion List <tech-kern@NetBSD.org>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: tech-kern
Date: 07/23/2006 22:38:55
>> Altneratively...some time ago, I wrote code that allows me to mount
>> an FFS such that the directory that becomes the mount-point root is
>> not necessarily the root of the filesystem in the partition.  For
>> example, if I have a parititon containing an all-in-one-partition
>> NetBSD install, I could mount just its /usr subtree somewhere.
> That's a really cool idea!  I've thought in more abstract terms about
> something similar ever since I was first exposed to unix.

Yes, it would have made sense to do it more generally, somewhere in the
VFS code, so that it worked for any filesystem type.  But that looked
like a lot more work (even if perhaps msot of the work was
understanding stuff I didn't yet), and for my purposes at the time this
was good enough.

If you want to argue that this is a "good is the enemy of the best"
case, you'll get no quarrel from me.

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B