/etc/fstab.empty is created and not used

[LaszloGombos]

dracut creates /etc/fstab.empty for each generated initramfs and this does not seem to be used for anything. Get rid of it.

[aafeijoo-suse]

It's for fsck. See fsck(8):

If no filesystems are specified on the command line, and the -A option is not specified, fsck will default to checking filesystems in /etc/fstab serially. This is equivalent to the -As options.
...
FSTAB_FILE
This environment variable allows the system administrator to override the standard location of the /etc/fstab file. It is also useful for developers who are testing fsck.

[LaszloGombos]

@aafeijoo-suse I agree that this is not a bug and I think the original issue report does not quite explain all the motivations. There is a performance benefit for not creating an extra empty file - especially when it is never needed - see #2386 (review)

This module is almost always included, so it make sense to be stringent about performance.

Due to ramfs' design, at least one page will be allocated for one file however small the file is. On machine with large page size, this will become worse and waste too many memory.

[stale]

This issue is being marked as stale because it has not had any recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. If this is still an issue in the latest release of Dracut and you would like to keep it open please comment on this issue within the next 7 days. Thank you for your contributions.