Subject: Re: special-casing access to image files
To: Luke Mewburn <lukem@wasabisystems.com>
From: Hubert Feyrer <hubert.feyrer@informatik.fh-regensburg.de>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 08/20/2001 02:10:08
On Mon, 20 Aug 2001, Luke Mewburn wrote:
> Before -F, many of the tools would not permit the use of a regular
> file as a file system image; they specifically checked if the provided
> device was a block or character special file.
> 
> I wanted a consistent way of allow these tools to manipulate file
> system images without compromising the existing behaviour that each
> tool had with respect to them making specific checks, and without
> requiring interactive user intervention when manipulating fs images in
> files.

Let me clarify what I argued for: I think it's great that we can now
manipulate files. I'd just prefer if we didn't have to give it a switch to
do so. If I give the tool a image file instead of a device, it should just
DTRT.

Besides the "do you really want to do that?" query for newfs, I didn't see
anything that's changed, and I don't really think that query is that
useful. 


 - Hubert

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