> Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 19:33:34 -0400
> From: Eric Youngdale <eric@andante.jic.com>
>
> If I get a clear indication that this is the direction we want
> to go, then scsidev can be cleaned up and enhanced (making it volume
> label aware is one enhancement I wanted to add, especially now that
> ext2 supports volume labels). It also should be made filesystem aware
> too, I think so that it can recognize various types of filesystems
> (this is a prerequisite to being able to snarf the volume labels).
>
> I had always thought that the right approach would go far beyond
> scsidev; if you have a volume management daemon that would automatically
> do the right thing based on the volume ID (pretty much all filesystems
> have them now: ext2, iso9660, even MS-DOS FAT), then who cares what the
> device name is?
>
> Have the volume management daemon take care of doing the filesystem
> checking, the mounting, even the backup of fixed disks. It could query
> the system for a list of block devices, and then probe each one looking
> for filesystems. When it found one, it would use an internal database
> to determine where a filesystem should be mounted (if it should be
> mounted).
It's scary how much this resembles TOPS-20's PULSAR daemon. I was going
to suggest such a scheme myself.
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer MWOOD@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU
Those who will not learn from history are doomed to reimplement it.