Re: Why do we have to support tmpfs for /var/run (policy changes in 3.8.1)

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Michael Biebl]
>> I believe the original motivation for tmpfs /var/run in Solaris was
>> that it was pointless to maintain scripts that try to clean
>> /var/run (or /tmp or any other defined-transient directory) on
>> boot, which can be dangerous and tricky if you don't write them
>> carefully, when you can just put them
> 
> But this functionality is already there as Debian supports a static
> /var/run and support for that is not going away. Maybe Petter can
> comment if this ever posed any (security) problems.

Not quite sure what the question is.  As far as I know, Debian
supported tmpfs mounted /var/run when I become co-maintainer of
sysvinit, and I have tried to keep it this way.  The only recent
changes it that it has become easier to enable it.  Very good to
notice that this now is documented in the policy.

If you wonder what the advantages of tmpfs in /var/run is, I know of
several, but do not really have time to track down them all.  One of
them I care specially about is the fact that it allow a computer to
boot with a read-only local file system (think diskless workstations
and thin clients booting LTSP, machines with flash disks and files
with problems with their file systems), and I believe this is a clear
advantage.  Having tmpfs there also make it more obvious that the
content of /var/run/ will be erased at boot.

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen