The problem I see with this method is mostly a question of ownership. Normaly when a DOS filesystem is mounted, the owner is root. of course, you can change that, but I think only root can. So someone logging in would need to either execute some setuid script (bad idea for a login, I would think) or their home directory would be only writeable by root, or everyone would have access to it. Jay On Wednesday 30 January 2002 09:39 am, you wrote: > Here's a hypothetical question that I've been toying with. Is it feasible > to designate /home as /dev/fd0? How about if the floppy in question is an > MS-DOS disk? > > Here's a scenario where I think this might make sense. You have a public > computer lab that people walk into to do work, e.g. Web research or > development, OpenOffice word processing, etc. These people want to take > their work with them when they leave, both so that they can open their > files on other (probably Windows) computers, and so that other people in > the lab can't open their files -- not even the sysadmins. > > So the lab is a network of Linux workstations, each of which has a floppy > drive. One of the machines has two floppy drives and runs a special > menu-driven program that lets people create accounts in the shared passwd > file (writing a username directory to their floppy disk containing basic > config files, .login et al.), back up their files to a second floppy, etc. > > When the user sits down at one of the workstations, she puts her disk into > the drive before logging in. The workstation finds her login name in the > shared passwd database and finds her files in /home/username, which is > /dev/fd0/username. Her Web bookmarks, e-mail address book, and files are > all on that floppy, which she takes with her when she leaves and can open > on any Windows machine. > > I know there are inherent limitations to this plan, since 1.4 MB isn't as > much space as it used to be, and Windows has trouble with some UNIX file > naming conventions and so could inadvertantly screw up the home directory. > I'm not actually planning to do it. But I'm curious: could it work? --Ben > > _______________________________________________ > Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, > Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list -- Jay Kline list at slushpupie.com http://www.slushpupie.com -- Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness.