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

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

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 ~ #

Thanks,
Mark