[CentOS] /proc/mounts always shows "nobarrier" option for xfs, even when mounted with "barrier"

Thu Jan 21 21:04:48 UTC 2010
Tom Georgoulias <tomg at mcclatchyinteractive.com>

Ran into a confusing situation today.  When I mount an xfs filesystem on 
a server running centos 5.4 x86_64 with kernel 2.6.18-164.9.1.el5, the 
barrier/nobarrier mount option as displayed in /proc/mounts is always 
set to "nobarrier"

Here's an example:
[root at host ~]# mount -o nobarrier /dev/vg1/homexfs /mnt
[root at host ~]# grep xfs /proc/mounts
/dev/vg1/homexfs /mnt xfs rw,attr2,nobarrier,noquota 0 0
[root at host ~]# mount | grep xfs
/dev/mapper/vg1-homexfs on /mnt type xfs (rw,nobarrier)

[root at host ~]# mount -o barrier /dev/vg1/homexfs /mnt
[root at host ~]# grep xfs /proc/mounts
/dev/vg1/homexfs /mnt xfs rw,attr2,nobarrier,noquota 0 0
[root at host ~]# mount | grep xfs
/dev/mapper/vg1-homexfs on /mnt type xfs (rw,barrier)

Can anyone else confirm this behavior?

Thanks,
Tom