kdb fstab command is confusing

[eschnett]

In my mind, in terms of Unix administration, fstab and mount are closely related concepts. It seems that kdb fstab creates Unix fstab entries, i.e. it changes the Unix installation. kdb mount on the other hand only performs actions internal to libelektra, i.e. it does not affect the Unix system.

When I first read about kdb fstab, I assume that this would also only change how kdb mount would work, maybe setting certain mount options automatically, so that one can e.g. use only a single argument to kdb mount instead of having to enter three arguments.

[markus2330]

Thanks for reporting!

Yes, you are right, we need to get rid of the fstab command. It basically only solves the issue that partial fstab settings are invalid (you can only set a full line within /etc/fstab, not parts of it). But the necessity to set many keys at once is a recurring one, so we need a template-based generic solution here (and not one that is specific to modifying fstab files).

kdb mount on the other hand only performs actions internal to libelektra, i.e. it does not affect the Unix system.

In some way it does: it writes into /etc/kdb and all applications or tools using Elektra will honor the new mountpoint.

Maybe I elaborate a bit what kdb mount does: In analogy to fstab+mount in UNIX systems: kdb mount writes into Elektra's "fstab" (/etc/kdb/elektra.ecf) to set up a "automount". Every following kdb get/set command will then automatically honor the mountpoint, but also every other application using Elektra. (Hopefully this analogy was not confusing, too)

Btw. https://web.libelektra.org/ will be ready soon.

[markus2330]

As discussed in #265 we will remove the fstab command because it is confusing.

[markus2330]

We removed the fstab command. Now we only have kdb mount. I also improved the docu of kdb mount so that it is more clear that it persistently mounts files.