> > >[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp>mount -o loop foo 1 > > Why don't we just patch mount to use /var/run/mtab? > > I don't know about any other program which modifies it. > > because /var is not always on the same partition as /
/etc/mtab shouldn't exist, all the information should be handled by the kernel itself. But for the time being, I think I have a better solution than the current one: Allocate a shared memory area. SHM areas are kept in memory like small ramdisk. /etc/mtab is rather small, never longer than a 4k page, besides the memory is swappable. And there's an advantage: With a SHM capable mount program there would be no problem when mounting root read only.