[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Re: Early writable filesystem

[Thomas Hood]

I see that the latest Ubuntu sysvinit package (2.86.ds1-6ubuntu1) mounts tmpfses
on /var/run and /var/lock (in S00mountvirtfs):

  * Mount /var/run and /var/lock as tmpfs to avoid race conditions with
    needing writable places during boot, we'll ensure anything needing a
    subdir doesn't assume that it exists first.
  * Make sure that we don't clobber those mounts if we /var is a separate
    filesystem

Despite what is written here, I don't see any code that preserves /var/run
if /var is mounted by mountnfs.  Also, what motivates an early writable
filesystem is not a "race condition"; so it is questionable whether the
Ubuntu developer has fully understood the issue.  Of course, Ubuntu still
gains one thing: /var/run and /var/lock no longer have to be cleaned.

Also, they have introduced a new initscript called "mtab", split out of mountvirtfs,
which just updates the mtab file.

I am not intending to backport these changes.
-- 
Thomas