Comment 7 for bug 8585

Would something like this solve the problem (taken from the Slackware init scripts)?

--- /etc/init.d/checkroot.sh.orig 2004-09-28 19:56:29.000000000 -0400
+++ /etc/init.d/checkroot.sh 2004-09-29 02:54:05.688635088 -0400
@@ -296,6 +296,9 @@
 if [ "$init_mtab" = yes ]
 then
        [ "$roottype" != none ] && mount -f -o $rootopts $fstabroot /
+ # /etc/mtab is old here so we delete it and create a new one.
+ rm -f /etc/mtab*
+ mount -w -o remount /
        [ -n "$devfs" ] && mount -f $devfs
        . /etc/init.d/mountvirtfs
 fi