From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 10313 invoked by alias); 11 Jun 2006 23:22:23 -0000 Received: (qmail 10264 invoked by uid 22791); 11 Jun 2006 23:22:21 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mail.prospeed.net (HELO mail.prospeed.net) (12.46.111.140) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Sun, 11 Jun 2006 23:22:16 +0000 Received: from [192.168.0.230] (lhall.prospeed.net [64.25.83.123]) (authenticated bits=0) by mail.prospeed.net (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id k5BNMDgD029865 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Sun, 11 Jun 2006 19:22:14 -0400 Message-ID: <448CA5A4.3090706@cygwin.com> Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 00:41:00 -0000 From: "Larry Hall (Cygwin)" Reply-To: cygwin@cygwin.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060112 Fedora/1.5-1.fc4.remi Thunderbird/1.5 Mnenhy/0.7.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cygwin@cygwin.com Subject: Re: mount never fails ... sorta References: <200606112215.k5BMFOW7015470@sd.skydive1.com> In-Reply-To: <200606112215.k5BMFOW7015470@sd.skydive1.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com X-SW-Source: 2006-06/txt/msg00229.txt.bz2 Richard Foulk wrote: >> Richard Foulk wrote: >>> Give mount(1) nonexistent hosts or directories and it will complain, >>> but it still populates the mount table as if it succeeded. >>> >>> It also always returns zero, for success or failure. >> Cygwin's mount is a different bird than on Unix. It really is just a mapping >> table of POSIX names to DOS or UNC-style paths. It is not required that the >> POSIX path exist for things to work. But since most people coming from a UNIX >> background expect that it does and it certainly helps things like shell >> path completion if the paths do already exist, you get a warning to let you >> know about this difference. >> > > I guess I should have said mount's behavior is wrong and broken. > > It knows when there's an error it just does the wrong things. > > 1. mount reports the error to stderr, but not via the return code. Well, if you feel strongly about this, then PTC. If there's going to be much worthwhile debate on this issue, giving the specifics of your proposal via a patch makes it easy for people to provide specific feedback. > 2. mount knows about the error but signals success anyway -- by > listing a (non-existent) mount within the mount table. You say error now. Before you called it as it's reported, a warning. Seems you're escalating things here without much cause. 'mount' lists the entry in the mount table because it is not *required* that the target or the source exist at the time the entry is created for the mount point to be valid. The target *never* has to exist in the file system for the mount point to work. The source only needs to exist when the target path is being used. And at that point you get a very valid error if the target is still not accessible - "No such file or directory". > Sure Cygwin's mount is different than Unix's. That's what Cygwin is all > about, hiding those differences. Cygwin's mount fails at that. Cygwin's 'mount' has *no* functional overlap with Unix's, for better or worse. If you expect Cygwin's 'mount' to do what the Unix 'mount' does, then you're going to be very disappointed. The semantics are completely different. If you want to argue that Cygwin's 'mount' and 'umount' commands should be called something else because of this difference, that's reasonable (though not very likely to happen given it's historical usage in the Cygwin environment and the lack of file system drivers in Cygwin to support "real" mounting). But that's not a basis on which to claim that Cygwin's 'mount' is broken. > Registering a mount that doesn't exist is quite broken. Have you tried it? It works just as I've described. Something that works can't really be termed "broken". -- Larry Hall http://www.rfk.com RFK Partners, Inc. (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office 838 Washington Street (508) 893-9889 - FAX Holliston, MA 01746 -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/