[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#494001: debian-installer: /etc/mtab must be a symlink to /proc/mounts with linux >= 2.6.26

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Roger Leigh]
> I've attached a new patch against the current sources to implement
> this.  Note that it only handles migration in one direction, that
> it, it will not switch /back/ from a symlink in the absence of
> /proc/mounts.  While this could be added, is this a situation we
> really need to cater for?

Last time I checked, /proc/mounts did not contain all the status
information stored by mount in /etc/mtab, and thus were not really safe
to use in all cases as a replacement for /etc/mtab.  I do not remember
the details, but it might have been related to SMB mounts.

Did this change?  If not, replacing /etc/mtab with a symlink is not
really safe to do.

I believe that before this change is introduced, someone should check if
everything previously stored in /etc/mtab will be included in
/proc/mounts, at least for nfs, smb/cifs, fuse (like sshfs and others),
to make sure we do not introduce a regression.

I am aware that the new "container" stuff in Linux make /proc/mounts
content not match the stuff in /etc/mtab if processes have limited
access/view, but am not sure if that is a bigger problem than loosing
information in /etc/mtab that might be needed by umount.
-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen