[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#670106: Bug#670106: initscripts: please ignore noauto sysfs entries in fstab

[Carsten Hey]

* Henrique de Moraes Holschuh [2012-04-28 12:11 -0300]:
> On Wed, 25 Apr 2012, Carsten Hey wrote:
> > The problem is that installing Squeeze via grml-debootstrap perfectly
> > works and after upgrading to Wheezy udev will not start.  A wrongly
> > generated /etc/fstab can't be fixed for existing systems by releasing
> > a fixed version of a tool that is only run once during installation.
>
> The correct thing to do would be to fix the broken /etc/fstab, then...

There is only one reliable way to do so: in initscripts' preinst.  But
if it does not need to be that reliable, then postinst would be fine too
in case you'd like to keep the preinst scripts of essential packages
(and their dependencies) as small or as simple as possible.


> > initscripts is currently respecting what you obviously *think* are the
> > wishes of the admin.  Since /sys is nowadays mounted on most or all
>
> Which means we're following the principle of least surprise...

In general, I don't consider changing a programs behaviour without
a reason to do so to match the principle of least surprise.  Not
starting udev because of this change (not mounting /sys in Wheezy with
the same config that works in Squeeze) doesn't make the situation any
better.


> And you can mount /sys more than once, in weird places for whatever
> reasons.  Those could conceivably be "noauto", so we'd have to ignore
> noauto only on lines that attempt to mount the special filesystems where
> we'd expect them to be mounted in the first place.

I agree, and I don't think that this would be a problem.  Alternatively
fstab entries could be ignored entirely if the file system is sysfs, the
mountpoint is /sys and the options contain noauto; and similar for
/proc.


> > In my opinion, the underlying problem is that there is no clear and
> > distribution independent semantic of noauto when used in a fstab entry
> > for those standard virtual file systems.  If there would be such a clear
>
> The other distros ignore "noauto"?  Or do them ignore /etc/fstab
> entirely for the special filesystems?  I suspect it is the later.

I'm neither sure about the answers to your questions not about their
intention.


Regards
Carsten