[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#851427: sysvinit makes /dev/shm a symlink to /run/shm, should be other way round

[Simon McVittie]

Package: initscripts
Version: 2.88dsf-59.8
Severity: normal

On Sat, 14 Jan 2017 at 11:00:51 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 03:54:30PM +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
> > If I'm reading the initscripts code correctly, sysvinit does the reverse
> > by default, for some reason (/run/shm is the mount point and /dev/shm the
> > symlink). I think the motivation might have been to be able to use the
> > same tmpfs for /run and /run/shm,
> 
> I recall this being a misguided attempt to move it out of /dev "because it's
> not a device".  The migration did not go well, especially in the face of
> chroots that need to have it mounted, and since systemd did not handle this
> the same way sysvinit had, we effectively now have a mess in the other
> direction.
> 
> We should fix it so that everything again treats /dev/shm as the mountpoint.

Let's have a bug number for that, then. Please escalate its severity if you
think that's correct.

Steps to reproduce:

* install Debian (I used vmdebootstrap according to autopkgtest-virt-qemu(1))
* apt install sysvinit-core
* reboot
* mount
* ls -al /dev/shm /root/shm

Expected result:

* /dev/shm is a tmpfs
* /run/shm is a symlink with target /dev/shm

Actual result:

* /dev/shm is a symlink with target /run/shm
* /run/shm is a tmpfs

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This might also be related to #697003, #818442.