[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#653073: bug#10363: /etc/mtab -> /proc/mounts symlink affects df(1) output for

[Roger Leigh]

On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 04:03:04PM +0000, Jon Dowland wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 03:25:05PM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> > What df should do is automatically skip the entries that are obscured or
> > generally inaccessible
> 
> I disagree.  It's quite conceivable for a user to accidentally mount two
> things over the same VFS path.  When they do, they may rely on df(1)'s
> output to help them untangle the mess.  If one of the two mounts is hidden,
> they may not be able to fathom what they did: worse, they might tug a disk
> with a mounted filesystem by accident, being unable to determine that it
> was mounted.

Is this not a case of using the wrong tool for the job?  The primary
purpose of "df" is to show free space on mounted filesystems.  This
could be interpreted to be "show free space on visible mounts".

mount(8) and findmnt(8) [new, and very nice] are more appropriate for
this task.


Regards,
Roger

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