IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2011-06-01

<antrik> ugh... I just realized why settrans -a without -f doesn't
  generally work on filesystem translators
<antrik> obviously, it needs -R too!

IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2012-08-17

<antrik> youpi: no, only the -g is redundant; i.e. -ga is the same as -a
<antrik> (actually, not redundant, but rather simply meaningless in this
  case)
<antrik> -g tells what to do with an active translator *when a passive one
  is changed*
<antrik> if no passive one is changed, it does nothing
<antrik> (and I realized that after using the Hurd for only 6 years or so
  ;-) )
<braunr> it's not obvious
<antrik> braunr: indeed. it's not obvious at all from the --help output :-(
<antrik> not sure though how to make it clearer
<braunr> the idea isn't obvious
<braunr> perhaps telling that "setting a passive translator" also applies
  to removing it, i.e. setting it to none
<antrik> braunr: well, the fact that a translator is unset by setting it to
  nothing is unclear in general, not only for passive translator. I agree
  that pointing this out should make things much more clear in general...

--chroot

IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2013-08-29

<teythoon> btw, I somehow feel settrans is being abused for chroot and
  friends, there is no translator setting involved
<youpi> chroot, the command? or the settrans option?
<youpi> I don't understand what you are pointing at
<teythoon> the settrans option being used by fakeroot, remap and (most
  likely) our chroot
<youpi> our chroot is just a file_reparent call
<youpi> fakeroot and remap do start a translator

?remap root translator, ?fakeroot.

<teythoon> yes, but it is not being bound to a node, which is (how I
  understand it) what settrans does
<teythoon> the point being that if settrans is being invoked with --chroot,
  it does something completely different (see the big if (chroot) {...}
  blocks)
<teythoon> to a point that it might be better of in a separate command
<youpi> Mmm, indeed, a lot of the options don't make sense for chroot