Re: [gentoo-user] To mount or not to Mount proc, that is the question

["Canek Peláez Valdés" <caneko@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 1:40 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been trying to debug a problem where one laptop's networking, as
> controlled by wicd, seems to randomly go offline once in awhile. In
> the process of reviewing 5 machines I ran across an inconsistency
> across a bunch of my machines, new and old. It seems some of them
> mount proc in fstab while others do not. Some of these machines have
> been around for a few years not mounting proc and except for the
> laptop's networking issues there really haven't been any problems.
>
> Looking at the Gentoo amd64 install guide here:
>
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=8
>
> it appears that the recommendation is to mount proc.
>
> [QUOTE]
>
> /dev/sda1   /boot        ext2    defaults,noatime     1 2
> /dev/sda2   none         swap    sw                   0 0
> /dev/sda3   /            ext3    noatime              0 1
>
> /dev/cdrom  /mnt/cdrom   auto    noauto,user          0 0
>
> proc        /proc        proc    defaults             0 0
> shm         /dev/shm     tmpfs   nodev,nosuid,noexec  0 0
>
> [QUOTE]
>
>
> What would the issues be with proc not mounted? For instance, this
> machine doesn't mount proc in fstab but still has proc:
>
> laptop1 ~ # cat /etc/fstab
> <SNIP>
> /dev/sdb1               /boot           ext2            noauto,noatime  1 2
> /dev/sdb4               /               ext3            noatime         0 1
> /dev/sdb2               none            swap            sw              0 0
> /dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom      auto            noauto,ro       0 0
>
> shm                     /dev/shm        tmpfs
> nodev,nosuid,noexec     0 0
>
>
> laptop1 ~ # cat /proc/mdstat
> Personalities : [linear] [raid0] [raid1] [raid10] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4]
> md127 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sdb3[1] sda3[0]
>      343758245 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]
>
> unused devices: <none>
> laptop1 ~ #

I haven't put /proc explicitly on my /etc/fstab since a long time ago,
and everything seems to be working. However, I use systemd, which
always mounts /proc with the default options, and only uses the entry
in /etc/fstab (if present) to override the default options. In other
words, systemd always mounts /proc, no matter if it's listed in
/etc/fstab or not.

I don't know what OpenRC does, but it would not surprise me that it's
something similar.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México