[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#653126: /etc/mtab symlink to /proc/mounts breaks autofs

[Jamie Heilman]

Package: initscripts
Version: 2.88dsf-14

While I suppose technically this could be construed to be a "critical"
bug ... I'm not gonna call it that, because the autofs package is
pretty much a dead man walking at this point anyway (hell, it didn't
even make it into Squeeze, but it's still in unstable).  So, in
relation to bug 494001 (the switch of /etc/mtab to a symlink to
/proc/mounts) this configuration makes autofs (*not* autofs5 mind
you... that works fine) fail in a rather obnoxious manner.  This is
actually a known issue with autofs, although people are always
rediscovering it the hard way, and I imagine a few more will find out
shortly if they haven't already.  See bugs 464436, 399614, 520095, and
for added flavor 588675 (which may not look related, but it kinda is
because /etc/mtab and /proc/mounts look really different when it comes
the root volume, and I didn't see that discussion brought up in
494001, but it may bear thinking about as it's a potential source of
excitement).  Anyway, my suggestion is to just add autofs to
initscript's Breaks: list and call it a day.

-- 
Jamie Heilman                     http://audible.transient.net/~jamie/