Re: [9fans] How to implement a moral equivalent of automounter in Plan9?

["Roman V. Shaposhnik" <rvs@sun.com>]

Hi, Russ!

Firs of all -- thank a lot for answering all of my question
in a very detailed manner. I really do appreciate it!
Now, if you don't mind, I still have just one question left:

On Mon, 2008-12-01 at 16:55 -0800, Russ Cox wrote:
> > That's very similar to what I referred to as a "synthetic filesystem
> > doing the right stuff". But as I pointed out in my original email
> > this approach has a downside of never exporting these mounts
> > into the namespace of the process that caused them.
>
> You'd have the program export its own name space,
> a delicate but not impossible dance.  Then its mounts
> would be exported too.

That's pretty much what I'm after. Now, the question I still have
is this: was there a clear reason behind deciding not letting the
kernel help with something like that?

I would imagine that making '#p'/<proc id>/ns writable and receptive
to messages of exact same format that is being output right now
(plus an 'unmount X Y' message)  would be a very natural thought in
a Plan9 environment. Yet, it wasn't implemented that way which makes
me believe that I do (as usual) overlook something obvious here.
Please give me a hint to what it might be that renders the idea as a bad
one.

Thanks,
Roman.

P.S. Thinking for a couple more minutes makes me believe that a
writable '#p'/<proc id>/ns might even be used to implement
mount/bind syscall. Which, on the surface, would make it even
more appealing.