/etc/mtab a symlink to /proc/mounts?

[gerard@…]

perhaps make that link, it would make sense, and helps for good working of mounting and unmounting if / is read-only

[markh@…]

I've been doing this for ages and in general it works well.

I did see a report on LKML today however that when you do this, you lose some information; for example you see /dev/root in your mount output as opposed to (e.g.) /dev/hda1 for the / partition. You also lose some information when using loop devices. Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages is the question..

[gimli@…]

The /dev/root loss of information disappears with devfs, since /dev/root is made a symlink to your current root partition. I'd like to suggest to leave the mtab like it is now (although I've been using it myself for ages now). I don't know about the loopback devices, but we could deal with that later.

[markh@…]

Shall we take this to lfs-dev for a discussion? If so, I'll post all the comments from here.

[gerard@…]

• Check if proc file system is enabled by default in the kernel
• Add a note to book if user doesn't want to use proc file system, don't use the

symlink

[markh@…]

ok, I've checked. 2.4.16 definately has proc support enabled by default so we should be ok on that one. (I *think* it's been enabled by default for quite a while now)

[markh@…]

added to book

[gimli@…]

works like a charm :) bug closed