Subject: Re: mounts, ls, and filename completion
From: [email-masked] (J. J. Farrell)

13 Aug 1998 09:02:27 -0700
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
References: <[email-masked]>
Reply-To: [email-masked] (J. J. Farrell)
Content-Type: text
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked],
        [email-masked], [email-masked]

> From [email-masked]  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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