Server fails to boot when /etc/mtab symlink is removed in RHEL 7

Issue

• In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, /etc/mtab is no longer a flat file, it is instead a symlink to /proc/self/mounts. If a service for some reason uses the sed command to access or modify /etc/mtab, it is possible that it will remove the symlink, and create a flat file. This in turns causes the server not to fully boot normally it drops to emergency mode, df output shows everything mounted, but if /proc/mounts is checked there will be nothing but / is mounted.