FreeBSD, FHS, and /mnt/cdrom

[Scott W]

Frank Murphy wrote:

>The folks at the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) are discussing
>(again) where directories for recurring temporary mount points should go.
>Recurring temporary mount points are for things like cdroms, floppies,
>and digital cameras as well as HD partitions from other OSes (like MS
>Windows).
>
>Red Hat started putting these in /mnt (e.g. /mnt/cdrom), but that totally
>breaks compatibility with the BSDs, which have specified /mnt as an empty
>directory for ad hoc temporary mounts. SuSE has started putting these in
>/media, and now folks on the FHS list would like to know what people in
>the BSDs' communities would prefer.
>
>I imagine your answer will be something like "We don't care; do what you
>want," but I would like to present the different ideas, and perhaps you
>would prefer one.
>
>So, please put these in the order of most to least preferred, and say why
>you like or dislike any of them.
>
>- All mount points in / (e.g. /cdrom, /camera, /windows/C)  <- current
>FreeBSD standard
>  
>
OK for a small number of devices, but not down the road when the 
possibility for a sizeable number of transiently mounted devices could 
clutter up / .  It would be 'less terrible' if a few 'classes' of mounts 
were created as part of the standard, with actual devices/filesystems 
below each, although the potential to overly clutter / still exists.

Example:
/audio
/audio/ipod
/audio/generic

/video/
/video/sonycam
/video/generic

etc...actually, I think I'm still less than crazy about this one ;-)

>- All mount points in /mnt (e.g. /mnt/cdrom, /mnt/camera, /mnt/windows/C)
><- breaks
>      FreeBSD standard for an empty /mnt
>  
>
Don't like it, as others have stated, too many of us are in the habit of 
having an 'empty' /mnt , unless we chose to create subdirectories, and I 
often mount something I know will be used short-term only at /mnt and 
use it as a single point, instant mount point for 'whatever' I'm 
mounting temporarily.

>- Anyplace at all
>  
>
Nope.  This just leads to obnoxious workarounds and/or additional 
configuration files for developing software that needs to use either.  
Again, using a 'device class heirarchy' comes to mind, like a 'whereis 
mountd', where a program could ask for the location of a specified class 
of device, and then in turn scan any mounted devices, but this one's a 
BIT out of scope of the FS project ;-)

>- Anyplace but /mnt (i.e. what the FHS 2.2 currently specifies)
>  
>
K, but same as above, although I suppose it depends if they are looking 
to only define a single top level directory, or possibly more than one, 
eg subdirectory/mount points?

>- Anyplace but / or /mnt (e.g. /vol/cdrom, /var/mnt/camera,
>/media/windows/C)
>  
>
As long as it's consistent and not ALL of the above for the given 
devices ;-)  Again, prefer a single dir entry into /, which can grow as 
need be...

>      (some suggestions have been /media, /mounts, /vol, /var/mnt,
>      and /var/tmp/removable. Others?)
>  
>
/trans = transient
/media (SuSe way) is OK but possibly limiting (thinking of video and 
other devices that may possibly be mountable instead of accessing via 
/dev/*)
/vol I'm OK with but fairly sure it's being used somewhere 
already...Solaris?
/tfs = temp (or transient) file systems, but doesn't exactly roll off 
the keyboard..
/fs = easy to type, easy to remember (filesystems), OK by me ;-)

/tmp is already taken, drat ;-)

Scott

>Thanks letting us know how you feel about this,
>
>Frank Murphy
>
>  
>