[OpenIndiana-discuss] NFS fails to automount at boot

[James Carlson]

Sašo Kiselkov wrote:
> I've run into a bizzare issue. An NFS export I have in /etc/vfstab fails
> to automount on an OI client at boot, even though the filesystem is
> clearly marked as "mount at boot":
> 
> #device         device          mount           FS      fsck    mount
> mount
> #to mount       to fsck         point           type    pass    at boot
> options
> 192.168.133.1:/etc/streamers    -       /etc/streamers  nfs     -
> yes     nodevices,nosetuid,ro
> 
> When I issue /sbin/mountall or mount -a, it mounts just fine. Needless
> to say, its failure to mount at boot results in failure of dependent
> services to start, which is quite bummer if I have to do it manually
> each time. Nothing is logged to /var/adm/messages, so I have no idea why
> it ignores my NFS mounts at boot. It simply does. Anybody got an idea on
> how to track this down?

It's never been possible to mount NFS at boot.  The normal "mount -a"
takes place well before any of the networking infrastructure --
interfaces, routes, and the like -- are available.

Making it work at boot poses a chicken-and-egg problem.  You need to
have the local file systems mounted in order to start up the networking
services ... but if the mount process itself requires networking, you're
stuck.

This is exactly what the automounter is for ... though I somewhat doubt
that it makes adminstrative sense to have anything remote-mounted under
/etc.  The whole point of /etc is that it's local.

-- 
James Carlson         42.703N 71.076W         <carlsonj at workingcode.com>