Bug 177

Summary:	baselayout /etc/mtab fix
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	Daniel Robbins (RETIRED) <drobbins>
Component:	[OLD] Core system	Assignee:	Martin Schlemmer (RETIRED) <azarah>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	major
Priority:	High
Version:	1.0 RC6 r14
Hardware:	x86
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Daniel Robbins (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2002-01-15 10:17:48 UTC

Hey Azarah,

I have found two reasons why we need a non-symlinked /etc/mtab:

1) (as we already knew) the symlink to /proc/mounts messes up loopback device
handling

2) the symlink messes up filesystems mounted with the "user" option in
/etc/fstab.  With the symlink, any user can mount the filesystem (correct), but
any user can also unmount the filesystem.  With a real file at /etc/mtab, only
the user that mounted the filesystem can unmount it.  This is the correct
behavior and our current behavior could be considered a security hole.

Comment 1 Daniel Robbins (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2002-01-18 22:51:09 UTC

I'm fixing this in baselayout 1.7.0