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Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 12:44:28 +0100
From: Kasper Dupont <kasperd@daimi.au.dk>
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CC: Olaf Dietsche <olaf.dietsche@t-online.de>,
       Miquel van Smoorenburg <miquels@cistron-office.nl>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: About /etc/mtab and /proc/mounts
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Måns Rullgård wrote:
> 
> Olaf Dietsche <olaf.dietsche@t-online.de> writes:
> 
> > >>A simpler solution, that does not require changes to the kernel
> > >>would be to just move mtab to a more apropriate location. My
> > >>suggestion would be to change it from /etc/mtab to /mtab.d/mtab.
> > >>Then you could mount a tmpfs filesystem on /mtab.d. Or by making
> > >>/mtab.d a symlink, you can get the mtab file whereever you want,
> > >>including /etc.
> > >
> > > /dev/shm ? Supposed to be there on many systems anyway. Fix
> > > 'mount' and 'umount' so that if they see /etc/mtab is a symlink,
> > > they follow it and create the temp files etc in the destination
> > > directory of the link instead of in /etc. Then
> > > ln -sf /dev/shm/mtab /etc/mtab et voila
> >
> > I thought, this is what /var is for. So, /var/run, /var/lib/misc or
> > /var/etc might be more appropriate?
> 
> What if /var is mounted separately?

I agree with all of you.

/dev/shm is widely available, and is a filesystem of the desired type.
/var is intended for this kind of data, and /var/run seems intuitively
the right location. But /dev as well as /var are often mountpoints. So
to use those locations would introduce more mountpoints that will need
special care early in the startup scripts. And mounting them before
running fsck is a problem.

All of those thoughts is what lead me to the suggestion of a new
directory or symlink in the root. You can point it anywhere you want
mtab. And you don't need to mount any filesystems before the symlink
can be used. A symlink in the other direction would not work that well.

-- 
Kasper Dupont -- der bruger for meget tid på usenet.
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