[BlueOnyx:18345] Re: Problem with BlueOnyx-5209R-CentOS-7.1-BETA-20150701.iso

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Tom,

> it doesn’t mount /var because auf /etc/mtab. When you replace /etc/mtab with a link to /proc/self/mounts it works again.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Yet the 5209R VM that I have for testing
purposes didn't exhibit that behavior before the YUM update:

[root at sec ~]# cat /etc/build
build 20150212 for a 5209R in en_US

[root at sec ~]# cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS Linux release 7.1.1503 (Core)
[root at sec ~]# ls -la /etc/mtab
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 17  2. Jul 16:03 /etc/mtab -> /proc/self/mounts

But after a "yum update" that got replaced with a static file:

[root at sec yum.repos.d]# ls -la /etc/mtab
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2359  7. Sep 11:26 /etc/mtab

That's pretty weird. So I went through the entire BlueOnyx source code
to find *any* reference where we use /etc/mtab in any shape or form. May
that be handler, constructor, shell script, scripts being used by RPMs
during %post or %pre and what not.

Turns out: We never write to it or modify the symlink *or* the file
/etc/mtab. The only component that accesses /etc/mtab (for reading) is
the Active Monitor component swatch, which periodically reads it to
check which partitions are mounted.

So ... whatever the YUM update did with /etc/mtab, it sure is a problem
caused by one of the recent CentOS updates. Still: This forces us to
cough up a fix of our own to address this issue. I'll add a constructor
that checks if /etc/mtab is a file and will then remove it to turn it
back into a symlink. What a dirty mess.

> /etc/grub2.cfg is a file but should be a link to /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Yeah, mine shows this as well. I'll publish a fix for this, too.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber