ext3 not mounting (ghost mounts created)

[Thedore Knab <tjk@annapolislinux.org>]

What did I do wrong to prevent the proper mounting of multiple /var/*
directories ?

How can I prevent ghost mounts from occurring in the future ?

I created a machine with the following partition schema:

/dev/hda1 on /boot type ext3 
/dev/hda2 on / type ext3 
/dev/hda5 on /home type ext3 
/dev/hda7 on /var type ext3 
/dev/hda9 on /usr type ext3 
/dev/hda6 on /var/log type ext3 
/dev/hda8 on /var/spool type ext3 

I got the idea to do this from here:

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/ch4.en.html

On the first boot, all partitions were mounted.
But, I noticed from a df -h that all partions were the same exact size:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2              91M   26M   60M  30% /
/dev/hda1              45M  6.8M   36M  16% /boot
/dev/hda5             1.4G   34M  1.2G   3% /home
/dev/hda7             2.8G   75M  2.5G   3% /var
/dev/hda9             1.9G  418M  1.3G  23% /usr
/dev/hda6             2.8G   75M  2.5G   3% /var/log
/dev/hda8             2.8G   75M  2.5G   3% /var/spool

It appears that /var/spool and /var/log did not mount properly.
Moreover, I had some ghost mounts (mounts that said they were there, but
when I did a unmount it said they weren't there).

To fix the problem I did this: 

Moved the existing data from /var/spool and /var/log to a temp directory. 

I then removed the files that were created on boot /var/log/*
                                                  /var/spool/*

I then re-mounted /var/log/  /var/spool.

I just checked - var spool is writing OK as of now

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2              91M   26M   60M  30% /
/dev/hda1              45M  6.8M   36M  16% /boot
/dev/hda5             1.4G   34M  1.2G   3% /home
/dev/hda7             2.8G   75M  2.5G   3% /var
/dev/hda9             1.9G  418M  1.3G  23% /usr
/dev/hda6             2.8G   46M  2.5G   2% /var/log
/dev/hda8             2.8G   36M  2.5G   2% /var/spool


# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>
# <dump>  <pass>
/dev/hda2       /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro
0       1
/dev/hda3       none            swap    sw                      0
0
proc            /proc           proc    defaults
0       0
#/dev/fd0       /floppy         auto    defaults,user,noauto
0       0
#/dev/cdrom     /cdrom          iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noauto
0       0
/dev/hda1 /boot ext3 rw                 0       2
/dev/hda5 /home ext3 rw                 0       2
/dev/hda6 /var/log ext3 rw                      0       2
#source for idea
#http://www.stahl.bau.tu-bs.de/~hildeb/postfix/ext3.shtml
/dev/hda8 /var/spool ext3 rw,data=journal,noatime 0       2
/dev/hda7 /var ext3 rw                  0       2
/dev/hda9 /usr ext3 rw                  0       2

---------------------
Ted Knab