varlock and varrun

[Jack Wasey]

Christoph Pleger wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 09:42:47 +0200
> Thomas Kaiser <ubuntu at kaiser-linux.li> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>> On my Dapper system:
>>>>
>>>> $ grep -l varrun /etc/init.d/*
>>>> /etc/init.d/mtab
>>>> $ ls -l /etc/rc*.d/*mtab
>>>> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2007-02-21 22:24 /etc/rcS.d/S22mtab ->
>>>> ../init.d/mtab
>>>>
>>>> I.e. the script mtab is started before mountall.sh.
>>>>     
>>> Yes, and that I see as the problem where I wonder why it does not
>>> occur in a CD-installed Ubuntu system:
>>>
>>> /var/lock and /var/run are mounted in S01mountkernfs.sh (S22mtab
>>> only creates the entries in /etc/mtab, but does not mount anything,
>>> see "man mount" for the meaning of paramater -f), but /var is
>>> mounted in S35mountall.sh. So, directories /var/lock and /var/run
>>> are not present at the time when they are tried to be used as
>>> mountpoints. And even if they existed in the root filesystem /, they
>>> would be overwritten by mounting /var later.
>>>
>>> So, I still have no explanation how /var/lock and /var/run can be
>>> mounted successfully in a CD-installed system.
> 
>> When I check the mounted filesystems on my machine I don't see that
>> /var  is mounted:
>> thomas at LAPI01:~$ mount
>> /dev/sda2 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
>> proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
>> /sys on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
>> varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=0755)
>> varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
>> procbususb on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
>> udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
>> devshm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
>> devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
>> /dev/sda1 on /media/sda1 type ntfs (rw,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46)
>> /dev/sda6 on /home type ext3 (rw,nosuid,nodev)
>> binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
>> thomas at LAPI01:~$
>>
>> /var/run and /var/lock are directories in the filesystem and they are 
>> present when S01mountkernfs.sh is run and can be used as mount point. 
>> S01mountkernfs.sh will mount /var/run and /var/lock as tempfs.
>> And S35mountall.sh does not mount /var.
> 
> I assume that you simply do not have a separate partition for /var, but
> that it is on the root partition. But I have separate partitions for it,
> on my CD-installed system as well as on my debootstrap-installed system.
> 
> Regards
>   Christoph
> 

If you have a separate var, then you _should_ find that the root 
partition nevertheless contains /var/lock and /var/run partitions. This 
means that the tmpfs mounts can occur against a bare root partition, 
then once /var is up, it sits side-by-side with the tmpfs partitions. 
/var should not have run and lock directories.

Hope that helps.
Jack