[arch-announce] filesystem upgrade - manual intervention required

[Arch Linux: Recent news updates: Tom Gundersen]

Tom Gundersen wrote:

When upgrading to `filesystem-2011.12` there will be a conflict with
`/etc/mtab`.

Install the package as follows:

`pacman -S filesystem --force`

It is strongly advised to avoid the `--force` or `-f` switch as it is not safe.
However, in this particular case it is needed as deleting `/etc/mtab` manually
would break pacman.

The reason for the conflict is that the file used to be generated at boot and
hence not owned by any package. Now it is a symlink to `/proc/self/mounts` owned
by `filesystem`. This change means that `initscripts` no longer requires write
access to the rootfs (though other packages might).

URL: http://www.archlinux.org/news/filesystem-upgrade-manual-intervention-required/