Re: Screw Linux, I'm going back to Windows!

From: Thomas Richter (thor@cleopatra.math.tu-berlin.de)
Date: 09/05/02 

From: Thomas Richter <thor@cleopatra.math.tu-berlin.de>
Date: 5 Sep 2002 14:53:52 GMT

In comp.os.linux.setup Fredderic <fredderic@iprimus.com.au> wrote:

> The Amiga, if I remember correctly, used SCSI drives... A little more
> expensive, but generally much nicer.

As far as harddisks are concerned, SCSI is at least the more frequent
HD hardware you find (or found) in Amigas. IDE and even AT-Bus host
adapters exist, though. The floppy itself uses a custom-made device
driver - no standard parts, and nothing like linux. The SCSI hardware
is not directly integrated in the Os, but a semi-standard followed by
almost all scsi-host adapters allows to transfer software from one adapter
to another by changing the device name; this is a SCSI layer similar to
the /dev/sgX devices under Linux. However, this is not related to the
way how filing systems interact with devices and media as all this
happens one level above the "exec style" devices.

The AmigaOs handling of removable media goes back to the BCPL Tripos
which more or less "invented" the mechanism. AmigaOs doesn't feature one
single directory root, but rather several trees, one per medium (NOT(!)
one per device, which is something different). All available media are
again held in the handler list, something that could be remotely
compared to the dev-filesystem. As you insert a medium, a new node
is inserted into this list (call this operation "a mount") and stays
in there as long as at least one program holds an access right to the
medium (a "lock", something that is good enough to open a file from
it, but "locks" also apply to directories).

Locks can be transfered between filing systems (at least theoretically)
so you could actually insert your disk in drive A: (df0:), list the
directory, suspend the directory listing in the middle, by ^S, remove
the disk, then continue. You'd get a "please insert disk XXXX in any
drive", and then insert the very same disk into a different(!) drive
and continue the directory listing. Cute.

As far as Linux is concerned, I've to agree that the current mounting/
unmounting strategy is rather clumbsy, even more for a newbee. This
is something the Os should carry out for you, and not an instance on
top of it (as a file browser, i.e. KDE, or Gnome).

Hence, there should be a daemon running similar to the automounter
that scans all drives either /etc/fstab or something similar and
tries to mount them in a specific location given by the medium name.
This "mount" should remain up until the last program closes the last
stream going to this mount point, even if the physical medium remains
unavailable because it is removed. It would then be the matter of the
daemon to re-mount the device to some pseudo-device which just causes
a nice "please insert" requester.

> And besides which, I was under the distinct impression that most of the
> decent file system browsers were smart enough to automatically mount/unmount
> a floppy.

Which is not quite the point. You solve the problem IMHO at the wrong
spot, namely in the file system browser. Rather, this should be an Os resp.
kernel issue.

> I know the one I use under Gnome does - so as long as you close
> the window before you press the button, there's no problem.

I use none, only the shell. (-;

So long,
        Thomas