Re: [RFC] mount can figure out fstype automatically

On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 01:06:02PM -0600, Scott Long wrote:
> So in your opinion and experience, what are the pros and cons of 
> maintaining a table of magic numbers?

One con: every time you add a new filesystem, you need to update
mount(8).  Not a big deal, but it is something.
For Linux, the mount program usually is part of the util-linux
package which is separate from the kernel.  util-linux and kernel
are maintained by separate groups in Linux....it is the responsibility
of the Linux distribution to bundle together versions of util-linux
and kernel that work together.

For FreeBSD, the direction I have been going is to try
to make mount(8) as simple and generic as possible, and
push all the stuff for doing filesystem specific things into
the kernel, i.e. into vfs_mount.c for generic stuff, and
into each specific filesystem for fs-specific stuff.

-- 
Craig Rodrigues        
rodrigc_at_crodrigues.org