bin/149424: fstab and labels with whitespace

[Walter C. Pelissero]

Oliver Fromme writes:
 > Walter C. Pelissero wrote:
 >  > Oliver Fromme writes:
 >  > > The problem with this patch is that it breaks backwards-
 >  > > compatibility.  Some people might already use backslashes
 >  > 
 >  > As far as I remember, the patch I proposed allowed a double backslash
 >  > ('\\') to mean a single backslash ('\').
 > 
 > Sure, but still everyone who uses backslashes will have to
 > change his /etc/fstab *in advance*, or otherwise his box
 > will not boot after the update.

It seems to be unlikely there are systems out there relying on a
boot-time mounted filesystem whose device path (or label) contains a
backslash.  Certainly not a great deal of those.

Maybe you care to give us some concrete example.  Who knows, there
could be a BSD distribution, that I failed to notice, with a really
bizarre naming convention for the device drivers.

 > Changing the syntax of /etc/fstab is a very delicate issue.

Acute observation, indeed.

 > Of course, it would be possible to change the syntax in a
 > backwards-compatible way.  But this would require more code
 > and would potentially introduce more complications.

Maybe you should leave alone the generic considerations of
circumstance and write some code yourself.

In the past 8 years there have been three different proposals and
concrete implementations.  You could add your own.  So we would at
least know what you mean with "backwards-compatible way".


 >  > > in /etc/fstab, for whatever reason.  This change would
 >  > > make them rather unhappy, I'm afraid.
 >  > 
 >  > Being unhappy for having to change a couple of entries in fstab is not
 >  > nearly as bad as not being able to insert an entry altogether.
 > 
 > As I wrote, there are several workarounds.

Then, why do you write it again?

-- 
walter pelissero
http://www.pelissero.de