Rick Stevens wrote:
> /mnt is where you'd want to put more permanent mounts. /media was
> really created as a place for udev to mount removable media (CDs, DVDs,
> FLASH drives, cameras, ZIP drives, etc.) on the fly--hence the name
> "/media".
Um.
It used to be the case that Red Hat-like systems put everything under
/mnt, Debian (and other Unixes) put everything straight under /, there
were frequent debates as to which was "better", but once you'd worked
out which sort of OS you were using, you knew where everything would be
mounted.
These days, with the FHS[1], there seems to be no predictability at all.
The latest FHS says:
/mnt : Mount point for a temporarily mounted filesystem
Purpose
This directory is provided so that the system administrator may
temporarily mount a filesystem as needed. The content of this
directory is a local issue and should not affect the manner in which
any program is run.
This directory must not be used by installation programs: a suitable
temporary directory not in use by the system must be used instead.
I read that as envisaging that you'd mount (say) /dev/sdb6 straight onto
/mnt for one session, but it's sufficiently ambiguous that you could see
this bit as allowing /mnt/misc. The use of "temporary" certainly seems
to clash with your "permanent".
However, the /media description is equally confusing:
/media : Mount point for removeable media
Purpose
This directory contains subdirectories which are used as mount
points for removeable media such as floppy disks, cdroms and zip
disks.
Rationale
Historically there have been a number of other different places
used to mount removeable media such as /cdrom, /mnt or
/mnt/cdrom. Placing the mount points for all removeable media
directly in the root directory would potentially result in a
large number of extra directories in /. Although the use of
subdirectories in /mnt as a mount point has recently been
common, it conflicts with a much older tradition of using /mnt
directly as a temporary mount point.
So that implies "no subdirectory mounts in /mnt" AND no "permanent"
mounts in /media.
As you suggest, there's a third issue now, in that udev will create
mountpoints in /media based on various characteristics of the media, and
that could conflict with existing mountpoints (e.g. a USB disk labelled
"data" and a common vfat partition mounted on /media/data).
One could make a case for mounting these things somewhere under /home
(especially if there is one "major user" of the filesystem).
In practice, these days people will put mount points where they like. It
won't break anything, but will annoy people who are used to different
standards.
I fail to see how this is progress.
James.
[1] Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/): the
standard (most) Linux distributors follow that specifies which file
should be put where.
--
New address: james | Went to see the Rugby. Swansea are still sponsored by
@aprilcottage.co.uk | EDS. They are still dropping the ball, fumbling every
| opportunity and making idiots of themselves in public.
| Is this co-incidence? -- Alan Cox
