[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#653329: initscripts: mountoverflowtmp forces reboot which should not be necessary

Tue Dec 27 00:57:04 UTC 2011

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From: Ryan Curtin <ryan at igglybob.com>
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Package: initscripts
Version: 2.88dsf-18
Severity: important

   * What led up to the situation?
   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?
   * What was the outcome of this action?
   * What outcome did you expect instead?

*** End of the template - remove these lines ***

/etc/init.d/mountoverflowtmp will mount a temporary 1MB filesystem on /tmp
in the case of a full filesystem.  This is meant to serve as a protective
mechanism, but I contend that it actually provides more irritation than it's
worth.

Here is my particular use case:

1.  Fill up filesystem with endless amounts of porn
2.  Filesystem becomes full; 1MB overflow mounted on /tmp
3.  Realize disk is full; remove the porn which wasn't any good
4.  Applications don't work because 1MB isn't enough in /tmp (see #567539)
5.  Attempt to unmount /tmp:

# umount -f /tmp
umount: /tmp: device is busy.
        (In some cases useful info about processes that use
         the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))

6.  Kill processes using /tmp.  It turns out this is a nightmare, and it's
    irritating and difficult (if not downright impossible) to successfully
    unmount the overflow.
7.  Curse loudly (then file bug report).

It seems, then, that the only solution to the issue is to reboot so that you
can use your system again.

It is very easy to disable the init script (which is what I did to solve my
issue), but I don't like the idea that a "protective" mechanism like this can
actually cause as much (if not more) irritation as it intends to save.

My request is that this utility be disabled by default -- though I know that
this is not necessarily realistic.  Still, forcing a reboot is not a good
solution, in my opinion, and something better needs to be found.  I filed a
separate bug instead of commenting on #567539, because I don't believe that
just making the temporary space larger is the correct solution.  I wish I had
a good solution and accompanying patch, but I do not... I just have the
problem.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.0.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages initscripts depends on:
ii  coreutils       8.13-3
ii  debianutils     4.1
ii  libc6           2.13-24
ii  lsb-base        3.2-28
ii  mount           2.20.1-1
ii  sysv-rc         2.88dsf-18
ii  sysvinit-utils  2.88dsf-18

Versions of packages initscripts recommends:
ii  e2fsprogs  1.42-1
ii  psmisc     22.14-1

initscripts suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information