Re: `losetup --remove` is confusing, and misuse silently fails

Benno Schulenberg <[email protected]> Tue, 21 Oct 2025 15:49:01 +0200

Newsgroups	org.kernel.vger.util-linux
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Op 21-10-2025 om 12:00 schreef Karel Zak:
> Both issues should be fixed in the branch. I have changed how it uses
> --detach, --remove, and --set-capacity to assume the device name
> follows the options rather than requiring it as an option's argument.
> 
> It returns the mutually exclusive check to the game and avoids
> interpreting an option as a device name.

Nice.  Thanks.

>   # ./losetup --remove --detach loop0
>   losetup: mutually exclusive arguments: --detach-all --all --set-capacity --detach --find --associated --remove

Nnn...  My next report was going to be about this.  :)  About too verbose
and therefore confusing feedback.  The user did not specify --detach-all,
nor --all, nor --set-capacity, nor --find, nor --associated.  Thus it is
confusing to see them mentioned in the error message.

It would be much nicer if the routine that checks for conflicting options
would just print the first two incompatible ones of the options that were
actually given.  For example:

   # ./losetup --remove --find --all
   losetup: options --remove and --find cannot be combined


Benno

OpenPGP_signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 840 B)