findmnt only displays /dev/pts on Trusty w/ Utopic Kernel (14.04.2)

[Andy Sayler]

The findmnt command from util-linux only displays /dev/pts when run on a Ubuntu Truty install using the 3.16 Utopic kernel:

$ findmnt
TARGET SOURCE FSTYPE OPTIONS
/dev/pts devpts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000

This is true on both fresh Ubuntu 14.04.2 installs as well as Ubuntu 14.04.1 installs with the kernel upgraded to 'linux-generic-lts-utopic'. The same command works correctly on a fresh Ubuntu 14.04.1 install with the original 3.13 kernel. Also, the command seems to work correctly in the Ubuntu 14.04.2 liveboot environment, but not after rebooting into a fresh Ubuntu 14.04.2 install.

According to the discussion in the comments at http://lwn.net/Articles/634263/, this seems to be a known bug in util-linux due to a 3.14 kernel chnage. The util-linux bug has been fixed upstream:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.utilities.util-linux-ng/8557/focus=8558
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git/commit/?id=6c373810f5b1d32824371e9dff6ee5a006388f98

The updated version of util-linux, however, is not available in the Trusty repos.

Can we get the upstream fix backported into the Trusty-version of util-linux? Or better yet, should there be a 'util-linux-lts-utopic' package that tracks the newer versions of util-linux matched to the newer LTS kernel versions? It seems that as long as Ubuntu is going to supply LTS Enablement Stack kernels, it also needs to supply LTS-variants of user-space packages that closely track the kernel like util-linux. Other examples of similar scenarios also come to mind (e.g. btrfs-tools, iproute2, etc).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[John Center (john-center)]

Hi,

I've been trying to build snapper on 14.04 x64, but the old version of util-linux is tripping me up. I get the following error:

In file included from Btrfs.cc:34:0:
/usr/include/libmount/libmount.h:345:28: error: expected ',' or '...' before 'new'
struct libmnt_table *new);
^
Btrfs.cc: In constructor 'snapper::MntTable::MntTable()':
Btrfs.cc:1386:40: error: 'mnt_table_enable_comments' was not declared in this scope
mnt_table_enable_comments(table, 1);
^
Btrfs.cc: In member function 'void snapper::MntTable::replace_file()':
Btrfs.cc:1402:52: error: 'mnt_table_replace_file' was not declared in this scope
if (mnt_table_replace_file(table, "/etc/fstab") != 0)
^

The old version of libmount.h using the C++ keyword "new" as a variable name. This was fixed in the upstream version 2.22.1 of util-linux. It looks like a later version of util-linux is available for Utopic. Please backport this to Trusty.

Thanks.

    -John