Bug 190962 - /etc/mtab needs to be a symlink to /proc/mounts
Summary: /etc/mtab needs to be a symlink to /proc/mounts
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: setup
Version: rawhide
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Phil Knirsch
QA Contact: David Lawrence
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2006-05-07 13:37 UTC by Russell Coker
Modified: 2015-03-05 01:16 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2007-03-09 09:14:14 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Russell Coker 2006-05-07 13:37:24 UTC
Description of problem:
Use of the pam_namespace.so module can result in significant differences 
between the /etc/mtab file reports and the state of the name-space posessed by 
a user's session.  If the administrator mounts or umounts a file system after 
a user has logged in then /etc/mtab will be immediately updated but the actual 
mount list that applies to the user will not change.  This means that "df" 
will produce incorrect and misleading answers.

If /etc/mtab is made a symlink to /proc/mounts then the "df" command (and 
other programs that use /etc/mtab) will get the correct data that refers to 
the session in question.

Also please note that pam_namespace.so provides greater benefits to non-SE 
Linux users than it does to SE Linux users.

Comment 1 Florian La Roche 2007-03-09 09:14:14 UTC
/etc/mtab and /proc/mounts don't contain identical data and different apps
work with them, so I don't think we can just merge them.

regards,

Florian La Roche


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