mount -a remounts tmpfs entries: bug or feature?

[Roy Marples]

On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:46:10 +0300, "Vladimir Dronnikov"
<dronnikov at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Personally, I'd like to be able to mount valid stuff the way I wish.
>>
>> For a manual mount, I agree.
>> But I think 'mount -a' should mount everything from /etc/fstab, unless
>> it is already mounted.
> 
> 
> I fear mount -a is used 99% at early bootup when nothing is mounted. But
> still we are going to create a potential rathole here when mount becomes
> _stateful_ utility. Do we need more quirks, Ralf?

It's not a quirk, it's needed :)
BSD man pages state that -a will ignore entries that already appear to be
mounted.
core. Although the linux man pages don't state this, the behavior of GNU
mount from
util-linux is the same.

Why is it needed? Well, consider that many boot programs examine /proc for
a multitude
on how the initial boot should be done. So the subsequent mount -a in the
boot scripts
needs to avoid re-mounting /proc as it's already mounted.

Thanks

Roy