From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 7686 invoked by alias); 9 Oct 2015 14:50:26 -0000 Mailing-List: contact glibc-bugs-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: glibc-bugs-owner@sourceware.org Received: (qmail 7585 invoked by uid 48); 9 Oct 2015 14:50:22 -0000 From: "martin.pitt at ubuntu dot com" To: glibc-bugs@sourceware.org Subject: [Bug libc/19108] New: Stop using /etc/mtab (_PATH_MOUNTED) in Linux Date: Fri, 09 Oct 2015 14:50:00 -0000 X-Bugzilla-Reason: CC X-Bugzilla-Type: new X-Bugzilla-Watch-Reason: None X-Bugzilla-Product: glibc X-Bugzilla-Component: libc X-Bugzilla-Version: unspecified X-Bugzilla-Keywords: X-Bugzilla-Severity: minor X-Bugzilla-Who: martin.pitt at ubuntu dot com X-Bugzilla-Status: NEW X-Bugzilla-Resolution: X-Bugzilla-Priority: P2 X-Bugzilla-Assigned-To: unassigned at sourceware dot org X-Bugzilla-Target-Milestone: --- X-Bugzilla-Flags: X-Bugzilla-Changed-Fields: bug_id short_desc product version bug_status bug_severity priority component assigned_to reporter cc target_milestone Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Bugzilla-URL: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/ Auto-Submitted: auto-generated MIME-Version: 1.0 X-SW-Source: 2015-10/txt/msg00136.txt.bz2 https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=19108 Bug ID: 19108 Summary: Stop using /etc/mtab (_PATH_MOUNTED) in Linux Product: glibc Version: unspecified Status: NEW Severity: minor Priority: P2 Component: libc Assignee: unassigned at sourceware dot org Reporter: martin.pitt at ubuntu dot com CC: drepper.fsp at gmail dot com Target Milestone: --- An /etc/mtab file has been a broken concept right from the start (putting info about mounted file systems on a mounted file system), and at least in Linux (util-linux, systemd, etc.) it has been dead for many years. Every distro, systemd, etc. configure /etc/mtab as a symlink to /proc/mounts, but every now and then it still happens that /etc/mtab is a file: you might keep `/etc/` in revision control, under backup, trying to edit it, etc. This then causes e. g. libmount's mount monitor to break, systemd 227 will not even boot (which is way too strict, I'm currently arguing about that in https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/1495), and it's generally a pointless exercise these days -- there is just one valid value for that file (be a symlink to /proc/mounts). util-linux has deprecated it a while ago (offering --enable-libmount-force-mountinfo), and 2.27.1 will cease to pay attention to it completely (https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/commit/02501746). glibc's _PATH_MOUNTED seems to be pretty much the only place left that actually still needs /etc/mtab. So, my plea: can we pretty please get rid of this altogether, use /proc/mounts consistently, and stop creating/using/paying attention to /etc/mtab altogether? (At least for Linux, not sure about BSD and others). Thank you for considering! -- You are receiving this mail because: You are on the CC list for the bug.