Re: df: cannot read table of mounted filesystems

[Moritz Schulte]

Some time ago we spoke about the mtab-problem on IRC, the plan as
discussed was (iirc):

* A mtab-translators sits on /etc/mtab;
* 'real' filesystem translators (ext2fs, etc. - lib{disk,net}fs?)
  accept an argument --mntpath=...;
* if that argument is given, after startup, the fs translator looks up
  a port to /etc/mtab and io_write's a line - the mtab entry as it
  should be displayed- on that port;
* the mtab translator notices when filesystems go away/crash because
  the port is dead;
* the mtab translator generates output, which consists of all the
  lines writen by the filesystem servers.

Btw, I just noticed that sysdeps/mach/hurd/getcwd.c contains code to
're-translate' a file port to a path.  This code could be also used by
the mtab translator, which would eliminate the need of providing the
filesystem translator with the pathname it translates via a --mntpath=
option - it could find out the path itself.

                moritz
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