Package: hurd Version: 20130105-1 Severity: important This has been mentioned several times on the hurd mailing list and on IRC. Just filing a bug so this isn't forgotten.
Hurd is the only remaining Debian platform not supporting a dynamic /etc/mtab. Linux and kFreeBSD both link /etc/mtab to /proc/mounts. This means that not only can mtab not get out of sync with the true system state, it also allows correct behaviour with per-process namespaces. This is just as important for Hurd where the use of translators makes a single global mount table even less useful. It would be ideal if Hurd could implement /proc/mounts as for other platforms. Or possibly a translator on /etc/mtab itself? Whatever makes the most sense. Currently, initscripts mtab.sh generates /etc/mtab during boot by replaying the mount actions occurring earlier during the boot process. However, mtab.sh is scheduled for removal in jessie: http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/sysvinit;a=commitdiff;h=ec4a4b9fe76abd8208c355cba3ced40cfb2da7c9 http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/sysvinit;a=blob;f=debian/changelog;h=b5900017c62a59765ea45075853352afa4611120;hb=jessie-pending The code is no longer used on Linux or kFreeBSD. Hurd is probably using it, but I'm not 100% certain. That's /etc/init.d/mtab.sh. Note that mtab.sh adds selected filesystems from early boot scripts (/proc, /sys, rootfs and the existing content of /proc/mounts). Given that you don't have a /proc/mounts, it's already quite broken on Hurd anyway--rootfs only? So if you want to adopt this logic into a Hurd-specific boot script, that's probably the best workaround to cope with the immediate removal. I'll be happy to add appropriate Breaks to initscripts for you. Regards, Roger -- System Information: Debian Release: 7.0 APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.32.33-kvm-i386-20111128-dirty (SMP w/1 CPU core) Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-hurd-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130224022122.23932.62443.report...@nagini.codelibre.net
