Bug 190962 – /etc/mtab needs to be a symlink to /proc/mounts

Bug 190962 - /etc/mtab needs to be a symlink to /proc/mounts

Summary:	/etc/mtab needs to be a symlink to /proc/mounts

Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG

Aliases:	None

Product:	Fedora
Classification:	Fedora
Component:	setup (Show other bugs)
Sub Component:
Version:	rawhide
Hardware:	All Linux

Priority	medium Severity medium
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Assigned To:	Phil Knirsch
QA Contact:	David Lawrence
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Reported:	2006-05-07 09:37 EDT by Russell Coker
Modified:	2015-03-04 20:16 EST (History)
CC List:	1 user (show)

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Fixed In Version:
Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Last Closed:	2007-03-09 04:14:14 EST
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Description Russell Coker 2006-05-07 09:37:24 EDT

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 04:14:14 EST

/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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