> > I was wondering if someone could clarify this behavior. > > > > Recently I created a custom kernel which calls a custom "init" > script. While > > debugging the "strange" behavior I discovered that Linux processed > > /etc/fstab and mounted the root file-system specified before "init" was > > called. This was unfortunate since I was trying to reformat the > device that > > was now mysteriously mounted. > > Well, consider that the kernel has to be able to *find* /etc/fstab > in the first place, which means the filesystem containing /etc > must be mounted for the kernel to fully boot. Perhaps I need to be a little clearer. The boot parameters specified root=/dev/ram0. (which is what rdev does without a recompile) As you mentioned this indicates that the kernel knew what root was and therefore could read /etc/fstab. The /etc/fstab specified a different device as being root but I didn't expect it to be mounted before init was called. I wanted to work with the device, unmounted first. Although mount reported the new device as root I don't believe that it is the "real" root. No pivot_root or chroot was performed. I believe that the device was unformatted at one time and therefore must have been still using the ram disk image. So for the most part this was an annoyance and an unexpected problem to solve. TIA -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
