Removing shared subtrees?

Andy Lutomirski
2014-09-29T23:46:05Z

As far as I know, shared subtrees in recursive bind mounts are a
misfeature that existed for the sole purpose of allowing recursive
binds + chroot to emulate mount namespaces. But we have mount
namespaces, so what are they for?

They're totally fsked up. For example, don't try this on a live system:

# mount --make-rshared /
# mount --rbind / /mnt
# umount -l /mnt

It will unmount *everything*. On Fedora, you don't even need the
--make-rshared part. WTF?

Can we just remove the feature entirely in linux-next and see if
anyone complains? I'm all for propagation across mount namespaces,
but I suspect that, at the very least, there is no legitimate reason
whatsoever for mounts to propagate from a recursive bind mount back to
the origin.

IOW, can we kill shared mounts and just keep private and slave mounts?

--Andy

--
Andy Lutomirski
AMA Capital Management, LLC