Yes, especiall on Server Systems (Internet Servers, Modem Servers,
Point-of-sales terminals, Firewalls) this is very important for stability
and security. Since sysVinit supports named pipes instead of flagfiles and
the linux kernels provides /proc/mtab I dont see much more problems. The
biggest problem is the /dev. The easiest Way (but not the most secure) is to
mount a small ramdisk over /dev after the System has booted. IFS or userfs
can do a good job here, too.
: No, it isn't. That's where you got it wrong.
:
: My order of operations is:
:
: 1) Root is mounted (kernel)
: 2) mount -n /var -o rw
: 3) mount -o remount /var
: 4) rm -f /var/run/* (to clean out old pid's, etc.)
: 4) mount -o remount / (still read-only)
:
: then mount the rest of the system.
:
: Of course, this only worked once mtab and the locks were in /var/run.
You dont need to write to mtab anyway, just link it to /proc/mounts. /proc
can be mounted as the first filesystem (after the kernel has mounted /) and
then provides an up-todate mounts. If /proc can't be mounted there is no big
problem, your system wont run very well in any case. You sttill can mount
and unmount with "-n".
: Much better then depending on /proc. It would be a VERY nice system call
: to have. Perhaps returning a linked-list of a mtab structure? (one for
: each mounted FS)
:
: I'd mess with that if I had the need right now. Just moving mtab to var
: has solved a lot of problems.
I realy dont think its a problem to mount /proc and everything is fine. If
mounting /proc fails you are in trouble anyway, no need for another
Kernel-bloat. And the folks who dont run with /proc in kernel for
minimalized systems dount need a /etc/mtab at all. They can simply hardcode
mount and unmount (with -n) in the boot/shutdown scripts.
Greetings
Bernd
--
(OO) -- Bernd_Eckenfels@Wittumstrasse13.76646Bruchsal.de --
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