Subject: Re: use of mount -b
From: [email-masked] (Larry Hall)

29 Oct 1997 15:36:27 -0800
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To: Andy Piper <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]

I sincerely hope that this question does not lead to another round of people
piping up and saying which mount option they prefer.  There are many reasons
and many uses that would prompt one to use one mount method over another.  
However, in an attempt to answer the original question, you almost certainly
want to be mounted binary if you want to try to configure and build software
self-hosted.  If you don't want to do this, you *may* want to leave the 
mounts in text mode (the default).  This will allow things like notepad to
display the file correctly (since it does not read binary file line 
terminators properly).  You may run into problems with programs like cat,
od, and some other GNU utilities terminating early as a result of seeing a 
CTRL-Z.  However, if this is not important to you, text are probably what
you want.

Personally, I've found very few programs in the Windows world that will not
*read* a binary file properly.  Actually, notepad is the only program I know 
of that has real problems reading binary files.  I have not done any 
exhaustive tests however and I'd hate for this thread to degenerate into a 
flood of messages from people suggesting what programs do and do not work 
with binary or text files (although there may be some benefit to having this
in the FAQ or somewhere similar.)  However, it is probably worthwhile to 
note to all newcomers that a default mount (/) is created at the original 
installation time and this mount point is set to *text*.  A subsequent 
change of the original mount point (/) to binary means things like configure 
scripts, profiles, login scripts, and scripts in general need to have 
carriage returns removed from them, otherwise many complaints will ensue.  
There are many ways to remove the carriage returns from these file (see the 
mailing list archive if you're looking for more information on this.)  
However, the need to strip the carriage returns from these files does *not* 
indicate that mounting binary is inherently flawed nor is otherwise
generally undesirable.  It is simply an artifact of the default installation
mode.  
As far as I know, noone at Cygnus has seen the value of allowing the user to 
configure this option during the setup to avoid the annoying aspect of the 
current process for switching mounting options.

Mounting options are a matter of personal preference based on what you
think you want to do with these tools and how much you need interface to
Windows programs that cannot handle binary files.  I hope this helps answer
the original question.

Larry Hall                              [email-masked]
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (781) 239-1053
8 Grove Street                          (781) 239-1655 - FAX
Wellesley, MA  02181   

At 10:35 AM 10/29/97 +0000, Andy Piper wrote:
>I have to agree with this. Using mount -b to get sergey's version of bash
>to work seems just plain wrong. I want all my text files in a format that
>normal windows tools can understand, I don't think mount -b does this, does
>it?
>
>I still use the b18 distributed version of bash because it does what I
>want, bar some history problems. Using sergey's version of bash 
>requires me to convert files to unix format which I don't want to do.
>
>andy
>
>At 23:16 28/10/97 -0025, you wrote:
>>I've a conceptual problem with binary mount.
>>If I mount my system as binary mount -b d:/ /
>>(text=binary)
>>make don't works and I run in a lot of problems.
>>
>>If I mount by default : mount d:/ /
>>(text!=binary)
>>everything go fine.
>>
>>So my question is why and when should I mount my system as binary ?
>
>   ___                ____         	Dr Andy Piper
>  / _ \___ ________ _/ / Solutions_	(require 'disclaimer)
> / ___/ _ `/ __/ _ `/ / / _ `/\ \ /	[email-masked]
>/_/   \_,_/_/  \_,_/_/_/\_,_//_\_\ 	boot /vmemacs
>
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