Public SourceMage Discussion List

[nealbirch <nealbirch AT attbi.com>]

Nick Jennings wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 08, 2002 at 02:35:47PM -0500, nealbirch wrote:
>
> > nealbirch wrote:
> >
> > > Arwed von Merkatz wrote:
> > >
> > > > The problem is caused by /etc/mtab being a symlink to /proc/mounts,
> > > > making it a regular file solves this.
> > >
> >
> > Okay, further discussion on irc reveals that Arwed's mtab was a symlink 
> >  which was created ghod knows when.
> >
> > It would be a good idea if anyone else has the same problem, that is:
> >
> > /etc/mtab is setup as a symlink to /proc/mounts, when it should be a 
> > regular file created by mount,
> >
> > If anyone else finds that they have a symlink instead of a regular file, 
> > and can shed some light on how it came to be that way, I can determine 
> > if we need to take some action with the init.d spell that sets up 
> > mount.sh. It may be a fluke on one machine or it may be affecting more 
> > folks.
>
>
>  Seems like this isn't in the scope of the init.d spell. Or am I mistaken?
>  It probably originated on the install ISO's filesystem base. Possibly
>  on an older one (Not sure if Adam's ISO's have this or not). In which case
>  they are not tracked by any spell. 
>
>  Is the init.d spell supposed to control all base system files in /etc/ ?
>  I think perhaps there should be a baseconfig spell or something which does
>  this. It can track all the misc. files that reside in /etc/ and are not
>  currently tracked by any spell.


The init.d spell is becoming a catch-all for things, at the moment, by 
default. There are some loose cannon's in this, it appears. I have 
gotten reports from many people on this who have the symlinks, and it 
may be from a particular iso, at the moment, my thought is how to 
correct it.

A quick and dirty way would be to check for the existance of a link 
rather than file in the mount.sh file, if /etc/mtab is a symlink, then 
remove it before the script resets the mtab so that it can be set up 
properly by mount. Something like the following would do it:

# from mount.sh
# Addition to the mount.sh
# for mtab symlink detection
  mount    -n -o remount,rw /
# added to detect and remove symlink
  if [ -L /etc/mtab ]; then
        rm /etc/mtab
        touch /etc/mtab
  fi
# end of addition
  echo     > /etc/mtab
  mount    -f -o remount,rw /
  echo "Mounting local filesystems..."
# end change

This is probably a one shot deal, and since it's done at boot, it 
shouldn't cause any problems. I suppose I could setup init.d to detect 
the symlink and install a special mount.sh with the added code if 
necessary, to be replaced the next time init.d is called.

Any comments? anything I miss?

Neal
--
"You can fool some of the people all of the time
--and those are the ones you have to concentrate on!"
GW Bush-- from the N.Y. Times