[Info-vax] openvms and xterm

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Tue, 07 May 2024 23:51:58 +0200, Andreas Eder wrote:

> Well, here it is not! It is a symbolic link to /proc/self/mounts.

/proc/«pid»/mounts is part of the kernel API. The point being, there is no 
actual “text file” that the kernel needs to keep track of mounts. All 
tracking of mounts is done within the kernel, and filesystems can be 
mounted and unmounted any time, without having to edit any config files.

And note that different processes can see entirely different views of what 
filesystems are mounted, and where: this is part of the “namespaces” 
concept.

There are config files (text-based, of course) that distros will typically 
use to remind themselves to tell the kernel that certain filesystems must 
always be mounted at startup: that is traditionally /etc/fstab, though 
systemd-mount offers a newer and more flexible way.