The problem occurs with initscripts-4.54-1, but doesn't seem to be fixed in 4.70-1. Boot problem: The system didnt come up, not even in single-user mode. (Btw: where is rescue.img in RedHat 6.1??? The docs say it's there, but it isn't!!!). The reason was an inexperienced user who had edited /etc/mtab instead of /etc/fstab for entering mount points. The editor created a file /etc/mtab[tilde] (sorry, I cant type the tilde in this window), which, for some reason, is used as lockfile for /etc/mtab access. The hang occurs after remounting root read-write, when the lines # Enter root and /proc into mtab. mount -f / mount -f /proc are executed. Later in the script, the lock file is removed, but that's too late. If it was removed before executing the above lines, the problem wouldn't occur. Although editing /etc/mtab is admittedly stupid, I guess it can happen that inexperienced users confuse fstab and mtab, so this little workaround would improve stability. Martin Wilck <martin> Institute for Tropospheric Research, Permoserstr. 15, D-04318 Leipzig, Germany Tel. +49-341-2352151 / Fax +49-341-2352361
This is fixed as of the current rawhide initscripts.