RFC: Adding a ``user'' mount option

[Mike Silbersack]

On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, Joe Marcus Clarke wrote:

> I know we have vfs.usermount, but this is not always sufficient since
> the user has to own the mount point in question.  What I propose is to
> add a ``user'' mount option à la Linux.  This would make mount and
> umount setuid root, but would allow much more flexibility when it comes
> to removable media and desktop systems.
>
> I'm not a src committer, so this isn't a threat to commit.  I'm more
> interested in getting feedback, and hopefully some src committer
> interest.  I think this would really benefit desktop FreeBSD.
>
> http://www.marcuscom.com/downloads/usermount.diff
>
> Joe

That is a very useful feature, I think it would be a welcome addition to 
FreeBSD.

Making it work for floppies / CDs should be pretty easy, but since you're 
adding it as a new feature for us, can you consider making it even more 
flexible?

What I mean is this:  We have smbfs support.  It would be nice if 
usermount supported wildcards, so that you could say that user home 
directories on the samba server 10.2.2.3 could be usermounted by users to 
the "fileserver" directory in their home directory.  If that worked out of 
the box, it would really rock.  Basic usermount support only would require 
you to add an entry for each user, which is not convenient.

Mike "Silby" Silbersack