Bug 8988

Summary: mount chokes when mtab~xxxx backup files are present.
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Hal Burgiss <hburgiss>
Component: mountAssignee: Bernhard Rosenkraenzer <bero>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact:
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 6.1   
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2000-02-18 16:55:33 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Hal Burgiss 2000-01-30 18:44:16 UTC
I rebooted to find rc.sysinit hanging. I was able to get in
thru a mirrored root partition, and to isolate the hang to
any reference to 'mount -f'. They all would hang init. Trying
to get in with init=/bin/sh would get me in, but had all kinds
of problems with 'mount'. Come to find that /etc/ had a slew of
files like 'mtab~12345', all with permissions of '-------'. Deleting
all these, restored the system's and my sanity. Would suspect
some kind of bug in mount that is trying to access these, but an easy
workaround would be to do a 'rm -f /etc/mtab*' just before '>mtab' in
rc.sysinit.

Comment 1 Hal Burgiss 2000-02-12 01:14:59 UTC
I might add the events preceding this problem were tarring
to a mounted floppy.
The floppy filled, and first attempt at umounting failed.
Subsequent attempts
caused mount to hang and consuming all available CPU.
I believe this
is where the first mtab~xxxx file originated. There may
be room for operator error at this point. What I find as
the biggest problem, is that this results in an unbootable
system.

Comment 2 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2000-10-10 13:56:52 UTC
Mount is now using mktemp the way it should be.