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Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 07:14:28 -0800
From: Ben Ford <ben@kalifornia.com>
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To: Jeremy Jackson <jerj@coplanar.net>
CC: root@chaos.analogic.com, Brian Gerst <bgerst@didntduck.org>,
        Otto Wyss <otto.wyss@bluewin.ch>,
        "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Linux should better cope with power failure
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> Actually, I think /etc/mtab is not needed at all.   Originally, UNIX
> used to put as much onto the disk (and not in "core") as possible.
> so much state information related only to one boot-cycle was
> taken out of kernel and stored on disk.  /var/run/utmp, /etc/mtab,
> , rmtab,  and many others.  all are invalidated by a reboot, and are yet
> stored
> in non-volatile storage.  kernel memory is not swappable, so they manually
> separated out the minimum needed in core.
>
> Linux currently has a lot of this info in core, and maintains the disk files
> for backwards compatibility.  in the case of /etc/mtab, I believe
> /proc/mounts
> has the same info.  It appears to be in the same format as /etc/mtab,
> so most of the groundwork has already been done.
> i've considered trying just changing /etc/mtab to /proc/mounts in some
> utilities, to remove the need for read-write root.  This (and other cases)
> would guarantee consistency (look at /etc/mtab after restart in single
> user more - ugh)

It has been suggested to ln -sf /proc/mounts /etc/mtab.  Linus has said this, I
believe.

-b


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