Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: About /etc/mtab and /proc/mounts | From | Miles Bader <> | Date | 27 Feb 2003 16:06:46 +0900 |
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Kasper Dupont <kasperd@daimi.au.dk> writes: > > /var is clearly the right place for this; > > Is it?
Yes. On some systems, /var and /tmp are the _only_ read-write filesystems.
> > if /var isn't mounted initially, I'd suggest that mount should > > simply not update any file at that point, and the init-script that > > mounts /var can be responsible from propagating information from > > /proc/mounts to /var/whatever. > > Would you fsck /var while it is mounted?
No, of course not; that's why I suggest it's up to the init scripts to make sure that /proc/mounts gets propagated to /var/whatever. They usually will know enough about what's going on to take care of any special cases and add any extra info that's relevant.
If a program such as `mount' wants to use mtab and finds that it's not present (possibly because /var isn't mounted), it should either use /proc/mounts instead, or just ignore it.
> I think part of the problem is that /var is used for both files > we want to keep across reboot, and files we do not want to keep > across reboot.
[/var/run is for `non-persistant' files]
> There are cases where it is undesirable to have mtab in /var, > but if mount expect to find mtab somewhere under /var, we can't > even use a symlink to get it out of there, because /var needs > to be mounted before the symlink can be followed.
It will simply appear to mount as if the file isn't present, in which case it should gracefully stop trying to use it [see above].
It seems like the attempt here is to somehow make everything just work magically _without_ modifying any tools that use mtab -- and I think that just isn't doable in every situation.
-Miles -- Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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