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I have a Ubuntu 24.04.2 system where /dev/shm gets remounted (I assume) every now and then (roughly each 10 seconds), but I have no idea why. There's no mention of that mounting point in /etc/fstab and even if I would add an entry in there it would still be remounted with other options than the one I expect.

Here's the output from /proc/self/mountinfo (see final column):

$ while true; do column -t -N mountID,parentID,"major:minor",rootMount,mountPoint,mountOpts,optionalFields,optFieldSeparator,fsType,mountSource,superOpts /proc/self/mountinfo | grep -E 'mountID|shm'; sleep 1; done
mountID  parentID  major:minor  rootMount  mountPoint  mountOpts        optionalFields  optFieldSeparator  fsType  mountSource  superOpts
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64
32       26        0:27         /          /dev/shm    rw,nosuid,nodev  shared:4        -                  tmpfs   tmpfs        rw,size=4011076k,nr_inodes=1002769,inode64

I've tried checking dmesg -wH, using strace (though I do not remember the parameters anymore) on pid 1 (not sure if this is sane or not - ChatGPT suggestion), checking journalctl -k -f and even finding all files on the system and executing grep -IHn '/dev/shm' without finding anything useful. There was a couple of mentions of apparmor, although I disabled that service and it still got remounted.

I compared this to another system running the same version of Ubuntu (although with a slightly different version of the kernel - 6.8.0-63 vs 6.8.0-71) and the issue do not happen there.

How do I troubleshoot this?

4
  • strace on pid 1 does make sense if you suspect it is systemd remounting it (it handles .mount units after all), but if I remember correctly /dev/shm is in its hardcoded "very early boot" list which it doesn't reprocess afterwards at all, so it's likely to be something else... How about forkstat or extrace to see if something is spawning the 'mount' command? Commented Aug 7 at 4:04
  • Unfortunately those programs are not available and it's an offline system. In the end I had to reinstall the complete system which seem to have resolved my issue. Thanks anyway! Commented Aug 7 at 12:34
  • sudo lsof /dev/shm Commented Aug 8 at 4:17
  • Tried with ˋwhile true; do sudo lsof /dev/shm; doneˋ . No output at all. Commented Aug 15 at 8:50

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