From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <f92eb7a06c32cc832bc06c0b80319801@vitanuova.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] cdrom floppy tape etc, media mount point
From: rog@vitanuova.com
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Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 17:45:38 +0100
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> >The /n vs /mnt thing is just a convention.
> 
> Yes, I know it.  However, it's not easy to explain this to my naive
> students.  
> You, probably  many others?, don't want to have many directory 
> in /, don't you?

personally, i'd like to get rid of /mnt entirely.  i much prefer it
when things are in /n, mainly because it's so much easier to type!

i recently knocked up a little filesystem as in inferno as an
experiment (it was actually to test a new library interface), which
acts as a kind of auto mountpoint directory.

in this directory, a walk to any name will succeed, and will walk to
an empty directory of that name.  a read of the original will now show
the new name.

thus, having done:

	autodir /n

you can do, say:

	mount /srv/factotum /n/bletheridoo

and it will work - the destination mount point is created on demand
(and deleted when there are no more references to it).

i haven't used it in earnest, but it always seemed a bit unnatural
to have to pre-create mount points for all future services;
perhaps there's a place for something like this under plan 9?
(it's only a couple of hours work).

  cheers,
    rog.