Strange problem with /etc/mtab

[Bob Vernon]

In article <1990Feb17.023003.7444 at phri.nyu.edu> roy at phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes:
>
>	Every once in a while, a strangeness shows up in my /etc/mtab file.
>Right now, it looks like:
>
>stdin: not in comprc7decode: 0 0
>/dev/ra0a / 4.2 rw 7 1
>/dev/ra0h /usr1 4.2 rw 1 5
>[etc]
>
>	Does anybody have any idea what might possibly be going on?

A customer of ours once had almost the same problem.  Not the same
strange message but one that just doesn't belong in the mtab file.
The mtab file looked like :-

	Current timezone -10:00 west, Australian style dst
		(-600 minutes west, dst style = 2)
	/dev/iop/pdisk00a / 4.2 rw,noquota 1 1
	/dev/iop/pdisk00d /usr 4.2 rw,noquota 1 2
	[etc]

Took ages to track it down but it was obvious once I realised what
had happened.

In our /etc/rc script the following sequence of commands occur :-

	/etc/timezone -600 2	>/dev/null
	[ about 2 screenfuls of comments and other commands ]
	cat < /dev/null > /etc/mtab

One day someone trashed /dev/null.  ("It looked like a silly name so I
I removed it").  So guess what happened on the next reboot.  I would
guess that it is some similar sequence of clearing mtab on your system.


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