lamy@sobeco.com (Jean-Francois Lamy) (09/26/90)
Does Mips support or plan to support something like the SunOS lofs file system
type which allows "loopback" mounts -- where one mounts a directory on top of
a mount point (as opposed to a partition being mounted on top of a directory).
I've found this to be useful in at least two cases:
a) mounting a directory from a large partition as /tmp, instead of resorting
to a /tmp symlink created at boot time that keeps getting in the way in
single-user mode (ed does not take kindly to not having a real /tmp, as
one might expect, and even core dumps to manifest its displeasure). Yes
we know about TMPDIR, but a lot of things don't obey it ("ar" under 4.30
is reported not to, for instance, I haven't checked under 4.50).
b) Making a large archive available for FTP by mounting its directory under
the chroot-ed ftp directory, especially when said archive cannot fit on the
partition where ftp stuff lives.
Jean-Francois Lamy lamy@sobeco.com, uunet!sobeco!lamy
Groupe Sobeco, 505 ouest, bd Rene-Levesque, Montreal Canada H2Z 1Y7