Oliver Grawert [2015-10-29 15:36 +0100]: > i have been wondering for years why does it have to exist at all, if it > is only a symlink anyway, why cant apps/services not directly > use /proc/self/mounts ? could we perhaps get completely rid of mtab and > all the pain it brings along ? (i know this would be a huge project > indeed, but it seems a lot cleaner as an end-result)
That would indeed be nice, but this is rather deeply entrenched API. As it stands, as long as glibc still defines _PATH_MOUNTED as /etc/mtab, tons of software gets compiled with this path. So I hope that https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=19108 gets fixed, and in a few years when software gets rebuilt we might indeed be able to drop it completely. But there's also still a lot of stuff which hardcodes /etc/mtab: http://codesearch.debian.net/results/%2Fetc%2Fmtab/page_0 (most of it should be noise, but there's some actual hits) So, yay for the legacy of many decades of a Unix misdesign :-/ Our own plumbing stuff should be fairly okay now. util-linux 2.27.1 will disregard /etc/mtab completely, systemd doesn't care, udisks etc. also don't. But the world is bigger than that. Martin -- Martin Pitt | http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org) -- ubuntu-devel mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
