[RFC] mount can figure out fstype automatically

[Scott Long]

Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 08, 2006 at 09:05:51AM -0700, Sam Leffler wrote:
> 
>>Linux has -t auto; haven't looked at how it works.
> 
> 
> It's implemented in mount(8).  It has a table of magic numbers and offsets
> and tries all of them in a well defined order.  If everything fails it
> tries a few heuristics whether the filesystems might be a FAT filesystem
> as thos don't have magic numbers.
> 

So in your opinion and experience, what are the pros and cons of 
maintaining a table of magic numbers?

Scott