From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <d6ae2485b0a77c30504133351ee5cbeb@9netics.com>
To: 9fans@9fans.net
Date: Sat, 21 May 2016 22:28:27 -0700
From: Skip Tavakkolian <9nut@9netics.com>
In-Reply-To: <CANLPe+OOXvDQ88Nm1iUb31y6iEU2g5pjxRu48r8m9My_Dz9_Rg@mail.gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] Namespace inheritance between processes
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 93547cdc-ead9-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

> What is the reason for performing namespace
> inheritance by copy as opposed to namespace inheritance by reference?
> Is it just to simplify the implementation?

i assume by reference you mean shared between parent and child.  most
of the time you don't want the child process to change the namespace
of the parent.

>
> It seems like it might be useful. For example, if you had a daemon
> that automatically reacted to devices, like USB drives and CDs being
> attached and mounted them in the namespace, then you might want
> processes to inherit from it so they would see new mounts.
>

for unrelated processes the way to import a namespace from a server is
for the server to post the client end of the 9P to /srv; any process needing the
service can mount the connection into its namespace.  that way access
permissions are also enforced.  see srv(3)

> Also, a totally random question: It seems like poor ergonomics that
> one must create empty directories in order to serve as mount points.
> Why not just allow mounting to names that don't exist yet?

mntgen(4)