[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#423405: RAMRUN and RAMLOCK doesn't work if /var is a separate filesystem

[Michael Tokarev]

Package: initscripts
Version: 2.86.ds1-38
Severity: normal

When either of RAMRUN or RAMLOCK are set to yes (supposed to
mount /var/run and /var/lock as tmpfs), AND /var is a separate
filesystem (a good thing to do really), mount of /var/run and/or
/var/lock fails, because mountkernfs.sh (which mounts the two
in this case) tries to mount them before /var is mounted, hence
/var is still empty at this stage.

I wonder why this RAMRUN and RAMLOCK, (and other stuff like /sys,
/proc, /proc/bus/usb, /dev/shm etc) is ever introduced in the
first place.  Why not mount it the traditional way, listing them
in /etc/fstab, which is designed to do the Right Way?

Ok ok, /proc & /sys are special, because many things will break
before mountall.sh is called to mount all filesystems.  So I'm
shutting up here.

Back to the original issue.  I see many griefs in initscripts
to preserve the two mentioned filesystems over mounting of /var.
So I suppose (and it seems I'm right) that making empty /var/run
and /var/lock on the root filesystem should work (the question
is how to do that without booting off the rescue CD, but that's
another question, and I for one know several answers, but it's
beyong an average user expirience).

Shouldn't all this grief be removed and regular /etc/fstab be
used instead for things like /var/run and /var/lock ?

Thanks.

/mjt

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'testing'), (50, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.20-i686smp
Locale: LANG=ru_RU.KOI8-R, LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.KOI8-R (charmap=KOI8-R)

Versions of packages initscripts depends on:
ii  debianutils                 2.17         Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  e2fsprogs                   1.37-2sarge1 ext2 file system utilities and lib
ii  libc6                       2.3.6.ds1-13 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  lsb-base                    3.1-23.1     Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip
ii  mount                       2.12r-19     Tools for mounting and manipulatin
ii  sysvinit-utils              2.86.ds1-38  System-V-like utilities

Versions of packages initscripts recommends:
ii  psmisc                        22.3-1     Utilities that use the proc filesy

-- no debconf information