[RFC] mount(8) can figure out fstype

[Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH]

On Jan 18, 2007, at 9:14 , Andrew Pantyukhin wrote:

> On 1/18/07, Craig Rodrigues <rodrigc at crodrigues.org> wrote:
>> In this patch, I only modified the userland mount program.
>> If the user does not specify "-t vfstype" to mount,
>> the mount program gets a list of local filesystems from the  
>> vfs.conflist
>> sysctl.  It then tries to mount the filesystem, always
>> starting with "ufs", and then iterating through the list if
>> the nmount() fails with EINVAL.
>
> I would love to have this usability enhancement around!
>
> 1. Are there any (what are the) security implications?
> 2. "mount -t auto" might be closer to POLA

ISTR from back when Linux added this that the bigger problem is that  
the msdos filesystem may sometimes accept filesystems it shouldn't,  
because the only way to catch an invalid filesystem is heuristics.

-- 
brandon s. allbery    [linux,solaris,freebsd,perl]     allbery at kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH