/etc/mtab is not symlinked to /proc/mounts

[EdoaLive]

Some tools like df need this in order to work (see screenshot)
Can't think of other uses right now but it's a good practice to have it linked.
(It's linked in all modern distros and since we do not have an init or init scripts, no one is going to populate a real text file in /etc/mtab)

[stehufntdev]

On my native Ubuntu 14.04 machine /etc/mtab is a regular file, and it seems to be written out by init or one of the daemons (see below). WSL uses the native Ubuntu binaries but we currently do not run the native init or daemons which is probably why this file is not present.

Please give us feedback on the uservoice page so we can prioritize df appropriately.

test@UBUNTU-SERVER:$ stat /etc/mtab
File: ‘/etc/mtab’
Size: 809 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 801h/2049d Inode: 7621296 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2016-04-15 06:54:30.436743600 -0700
Modify: 2016-03-30 08:48:02.878940800 -0700
Change: 2016-04-14 12:03:42.928743600 -0700
Birth: -
test@UBUNTU-SERVER:$ uptime
07:58:44 up 15 days, 23:10, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05

[EdoaLive]

Added uservoice feedback: https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/266908-command-prompt-console-bash-on-ubuntu-on-windo/suggestions/13514730-df-and-maybe-other-tools-not-working-because-of

[scottfweintraub]

Not sure the link is an accurate solution. root and /mnt/* are supposed to be using different file systems (https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subsystem-for-linux-overview/) and we see only one.

[SvenGroot]

The information reported in /proc/self/mounts is currently not accurate, unfortunately. We are investigating improving this in a future release.

[benhillis]

Thank you for filing the user voice entry! I'm going to close this issue out since on native Ubuntu /etc/mtab is not a symlink.

[piranna]

I'm using Ubuntu and /etc/mtab is in fact a symlink...

ls -l /etc/mtab 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 may 29 16:18 /etc/mtab -> ../proc/self/mounts

I think this would be the case since Ubuntu 15.04, but I would bet it was also on 14:04. Can you confirm that the previous statement of Ubuntu 14.04 NOT using a symlink was done on a clean install and NOT in an upgrade of a previous version?

[stehufntdev]

Yes, I believe the 14.04 install was clean. However on my clean install of 16.04 the file is now a symlink.

[piranna]

Yes, I believe the 14.04 install was clean. However on my clean install of 16.04 the file is now a symlink.

I asked so because the machine where I'm currently writting and from the previous snippet it was a clean install, but don't remember if it was of Ubuntu 13.10, 14.04 or 14.10, but definitely it was a clean install of one of that versions and it's using the symlink I put before. Good to know that in the current LTS is using a symlink too, so probably it should be done too on WSL...

[TylerLeonhardt]

+1 to adding a symlink for /etc/mtab.

[orinwalker]

I see that this is marked as completed for new Win10 insider builds. If this is just building a symlink, then can someone provide the syntax for building the symlink as a workaround? I'm still a Linux noob.

[crcrewso]

On a fresh WSL 16.04 system
ls -l /etc/mtab produces
ls: cannot access '/etc/mtab': No such file or directory

On a fresh 16.04.02 VM
ls -l /etc/mtab produces
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 may 29 16:18 /etc/mtab -> ../proc/self/mounts

Should this be reopened as it's a case of WSL Ubuntu not matching real Ubuntu?