FreeBSD, FHS, and /mnt/cdrom

[Jerry McAllister]

> 
> 
> 
> > > It sounds like you think that a new root-level directory should be
> > > created for this, and that /media would be OK, but there might be a (yet
> > > undiscovered) better name. Is this accurate?
> > 
> > That seems like a pretty good summary.
> > 
> > ////jerry
> 
> Cool. 

>  Could you also explain to me why you think that /var would be such
> a bad place for this?

Well, I probably can't give a hard and fast absolute reason, but...
We use /var as a place for directoreis/files that can grow somewhat
unexpectedly and weakly controlled, such as spool and logs, etc.
Because of that, our /var is most often put in some other large
general filesystem with links and doesn't really live in either
root (/) or isn't a root located filesystem, but just a directory in
another filesystem such as /work (or in some recent ones /lump - I
couldn't think of a better name).   So, making it the home of mount 
points would be rather awkward.   

I suspect that some others do similar things with /var.  I have
heard it mentioned.

I think something similar can be true of other root located file 
systems such as /usr, although for those it is more likely that 
it just be a directory living within /usr that gets moved and linked.

Generally, I think mount point directories should be as close to
root located as possible with as little intervening stuff that could
possible get shuffled around.    

At first blush, it would sound like /mnt would be a likely place, but
it has been out there too long and been used in too many locally
unique ways that mounts on or in there could create much unnecessary
confusion.

As far as "any ol' where" goes, that doesn't bother me much, but it 
sounds like what is being asked for is a kind of common place that 
won't cause problems so vendors and third party writers can go ahead 
and make something that will work easily across platforms with the 
least pain - and ain't that what everyone whines so much about - the 
pain of adding devices, etc.    This would be a harmless way to ease 
some of that pain.   And, anyway, if a standard location is adopted 
and if some users want to do it differently on their machines nothing 
would stop them from doing whatever they want with their systems.  It 
would be no worse than if there was no standard and probably easier.

Just lets not break a bunch of stuff to do it.

Gee, it's nice to be asked about something like this for a change.

////jerry

> 
> Frank
>