Bug#336928: yaird should use /etc/mtab or the mount output to determine the filesystem, instead of fstab

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Tue, Nov 01, 2005 at 11:30:15PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:
> On Tuesday 01 November 2005 21:50, Sven Luther wrote:
> > I think it would be better for yaird to use /etc/mtab instead of
> > /etc/fstab to parse for the root mount point, in effect, this one is
> > guaranteed to be always full fielded, and not have any of the problems
> > related to strangely filled user entries in the /etc/fstab.
> 
> Note that /etc/mtab will not be up-to-date if the / filesystem is mounted 
> read-only.

Well, this is run at package installation time, which you would hardly be able
to do on a ro /. Still, it is good to know.

> > /dev/hda12 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600)
> > Notice that i did remember some code in debian-installer doing exactly
> > this, but i don't remember where it was.
> 
> d-i seems to use the /etc/mtab of the installed system while installing 
> some bootloaders, but d-i itself makes sure itself that it is updated 
> before it is used.
> I other cases the /etc/mtab of the installer itself is used, which is a 
> symlink to /proc/mounts...

Ok, altough (on my sarge system running 2.6.8) :

$ more /proc/mounts
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev2/root2 / ext3 rw 0 0


Which seems suspiciously non-useful :)

> So IMHO usage of /etc/mtab in d-i can hardly be a convincing argument.

No, but it can be used as source of inspiration or as reference, whcih is why
i mentioned it.

Anyway, Erik fixed the /etc/fstab probing code so this is moot.

Friendly,

Sven Luther