Re: RFC: New required package: libblkid1

[Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 02:38:38PM +0900, Miles Bader wrote:
> Really only /etc needs to be available on the root filesystem; /run
> (or /var/my-persistant-cache, or whatever it's called) doesn't -- it
> can be mounted very early if necessary for special situations.

/etc/blkid.tab may be necessary to find the /var partition.  (i.e., if
/etc/fstab has LABEL=var, and you don't want to search all of the 2000
block devices in the system, then you want to use /etc/blkid.tab to be
able to quickly find the var partition.)

Similarly, /etc/ld.so.cache is necessary to run the mount command (and
any other dynamically linked executable).  So saying that they can
live on another partition is simply not correct, and seems to indicate
that the person making the argument doesn't understand the issues
involved.  

If "/run can be mounted very early", then there's no point to have a
separate /run directory to clutter up the root partition.  /var can
simply be mounted early.  The whole point of /run is because it needs
to be on the root.  The question then is that if /run must be on the
root, and /etc must be on the root, why bother separating the two?

The reason why it's in /etc/blkid.tab and not /var/run/blkid.tab is
*precisely* because it must be on the root partition.  /var might not
be on the root partition.

						- Ted