Bugzilla Bug 186508

Due to an oversight on my part, HAL 0.5.9 went stable but needed a udev fix
that was not in the latest stable. This issue causes havoc on GNOME 2.18 and as
such blocks GNOME 2.18 going stable. A few apps that dep on the latest HAL have
also gone stable so backing HAL out of stable is not a possible solution.

Basically, the kernel when not using an initrd will always say in /proc/mounts
that /dev/root is your / block device. However, our current udev does not
create the /dev/root block device. Which results in HAL not believing that / is
mounted.

Since after much debate it was decided that this issue is outside the scope of
the kernel and HAL, the issue lies with udev. I have since patched HAL to not
be stupid with / but that only appears in hal-0.5.9.1, which is not stable.

Either way, the issue is that the kernel reports to userspace that /dev/root is
the / device however no /dev/root exists. Several developers have hit their
heads on this issue when symlinking /etc/mtab to /proc/mounts (which is a
completely valid configuration).

sparc stable.

Stable for HPPA.

alpha/ia64/x86 stable, thanks Tobias

mips stable.

amd64 stable

Marked ppc/ppc64 stable.

Obsoleted by Bug 188796.