Re: Removing shared subtrees?

Al Viro
2014-09-30T00:09:45Z

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 04:45:42PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> 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.

Wrong. Different namespaces vs. multiple mounts in the same namespace
have nothing whatsoever with shared vs. slave. It's completely orthogonal.

> 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*.

So will umount -l /

> On Fedora, you don't even need the
> --make-rshared part. WTF?

"Doctor, it hurts when I do it..."

I can suggest a few more self-LARTs, if you are interested...

> 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?

What for?