Re: [fuse-devel] /etc/mtab as a symbolic link

[Javier P. <jp...@us...>]

 > > I have come across some strange behaviour with FUSE and /etc/mtab.
 > > In my system, /etc/mtab is a symbolic link to /var/run/mtab, so
 > > that the root partition can be mounted readonly while still having
 > > a mount-managed mtab file whose contents are available through the
 > > standard /etc/mtab. (I run modified versions of mount/umount that
 > > look for the mtab file in /var/run, so they can acquire locks in
 > > the right (writable) directory.) I installed FUSE a week ago, not
 > > knowing that it also modifies /etc/mtab, along with sshfs, and I
 > > have found that mounting with 'sshfs' correctly updates the mtab
 > > file, but unmounting with 'fusermount -u' fails to do so, leaving
 > > a "fake" entry in the mtab file. Is this expected behaviour?
 >
 > Yes.
 >
 > > I have read comments in the code that seem to suggest that /etc/mtab
 > > as a symbolic link is indeed supported, but maybe it is so only when
 > > it points to /proc/mounts. Is this right?
 >
 > Right.
 >
 > You might like to try the CVS version, in which instead of modifying
 > /etc/mtab, fusermount calls 'mount', so it should work better in your
 > case.

Thank you for the advice. I have tried the CVS version and it solves
my problem. It also solves another concern that I had, which was the
possibility of fusermount and standard mount both attempting to update
the mtab file at the same time (since they used different locking
schemes).

Thank you,
Javier