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Re: mounts, ls, and filename completion
- To: earnie_boyd at yahoo dot com
- Subject: Re: mounts, ls, and filename completion
- From: "J. J. Farrell" <jjf at bcs dot org dot uk>
- Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 16:37:37 -0700 (PDT)
- Cc: lhall at rfk dot com, pete at horus dot cix dot co dot uk, jjf at bcs dot org dot uk, john_r_velman at mail dot hac dot com, gnu-win32 at cygnus dot com
- Reply-To: jjf at bcs dot org dot uk (J. J. Farrell)
> From earnie_boyd@yahoo.com Wed Aug 12 12:53:26 1998
>
> When you `mount -b D:/ /foo' the mounted reference is a logical
> pointer to the D:/ root directory _NOT_ to the directory /foo on D:.
> Therefore, when you do `ls /foo' you will also see the /foo directory
> and you would be able to do `cd /foo/foo'.
That's only true if / is already mounted on d:\; it would be a
silly thing to do, and it might be confusing - but then again,
if people insist on doing silly things, they should expect to
be confused!
> Let us suppose that the `/' root directory is mounted to c:\ and that
> /foo resides on c:\. Let us now suppose you `mount -b D:/ /foo'. You
> still have a logical pointer to the D:/ root directory and filesystem
> commands to /foo will look at the D:/ root directory and c:/foo will
> not be used (usually).
Which is exactly what should happen - isn't that the whole point
of mount?
> As for confusing cygwin32, which one is it supposed to use?
The mounted filesystem - the underlying directory should be entirely
hidden.
> It will
> attempt to use the logical pointer /foo and usually does; however, it
> is possible for it to use the physical directory /foo and occasionally
> does. When I was testing to respond to your querys, cygwin32 gave me
> "permission denied" errors accessing such a mounted directory.
These occasions sound like bugs in cygwin32.
> To help you understand the cygwin mount table, think of it more as a
> symbolic link table than as a table of directories available for use
> by the user. To help you further understand, remember that you are
> emulating UNIX, not using UNIX and that you are really using WIN32.
>
> Hope this helps,
Thanks, but I think we're at cross-purposes to some extent; you
seem to be objecting to the fact that mount emulates its UNIX
equivalent as well as allowing various other things such as
mounting on non-existent mount points. I think things might be
more consistent and less confusing if mount's syntax were tightened
up to be closer to UNIX - the first example you give above couldn't
happen because it wouldn't let you mount d:\ more than once, and
the problems which have been seen caused by mounting on non-existent
mount points couldn't happen.
Regards,
jjf
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