NFS filesystems not mounting at boot - can mount manually

[Rick Stevens]

On Thu, 2006-11-30 at 11:45 -0500, Thomas B. Walter wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-11-27 at 22:06 -0500, Thomas B. Walter wrote:
> >>
> >> On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, Rick Stevens wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Mon, 2006-11-27 at 15:38 -0500, Thomas B. Walter wrote:
> >>>> Good Afternoon,
> >>>>
> >>>> I have a lab of Dells running RHEL4u4. All but one NFS file systems are
> >>>> not mounting automatically at boot. If I manually issue command "mount -a" the
> >>>> offending file systems mount with no problems.
> >>>>
> >>>> Contents of /etc/fstab:
> >>>> everest:/scratch        /scratch nfs   soft,bg     0  0
> >>>> yoda:/data/yoda/a         /data/yoda/a         nfs     soft,bg
> >>>> yoda:/data/yoda/b         /data/yoda/b         nfs     soft,bg
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Result of df -k command:
> >>>> [root at cslab2 log]# df -k
> >>>> Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> >>>> /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
> >>>>                        74730664   6816748  64117744  10% /
> >>>> /dev/sdb1               101086     12734     83133  14% /boot
> >>>> none                    516592         0    516592   0% /dev/shm
> >>>> everest:/scratch      17413280  12970784   4268384  76% /scratch
> >>>>
> >>>> Relevent lines from /var/log/messages:
> >>>> Nov 27 15:08:23 cslab2 network: Bringing up interface eth0:  succeeded
> >>>> Nov 27 15:08:30 cslab2 mount: mount: backgrounding "everest:/scratch"
> >>>> Nov 27 15:08:36 cslab2 mount: mount: mount to NFS server 'everest' failed:
> >>>> Nov 27 15:08:36 cslab2 mount: mount: backgrounding "yoda:/data/yoda/a"
> >>>> Nov 27 15:08:36 cslab2 mount: mount: backgrounding "yoda:/data/yoda/b"
> >>>> Nov 27 15:08:36 cslab2 mount: System Error: No route to host(retrying).
> >>>> Nov 27 15:08:36 cslab2 netfs: Mounting NFS filesystems:  succeeded
> >>>> Nov 27 15:08:36 cslab2 netfs: Mounting other filesystems:  succeeded
> >>>> Nov 27 15:08:36 cslab2 kernel: i2c /dev entries driver
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Both yoda and everest have entries in /etc/hosts.
> >>>>
> >>>> I see System Error: No route to host(retrying) but I don't know why one
> >>>> NFS file system mounts and not the others.
> >>>
> >>> Are both everest and yoda on the same network and/or NIC?  It may be
> >>> that one network or NIC's route isn't up by the time the "mount -a"
> >>> occurs, so you get the "no route to host" issue.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Everest and yoda are on the same subnet. Everest (geo) and yoda (cs) are
> >> NIS masters for different NIS domains and the lab machines are part of the
> >> "cs" NIS domain but it's everest (NIS=geo) that mounts successfully at
> >> boot and yoda (NIS=cs) that doesn't. I'm grasping at straws here including
> >> this additional info.
> >
> > The "no route to host" is the telling issue.  It appears that there is
> > some oddball routing that's not occurring when the NFS client comes up.
> > It sees everest right away, but not yoda.  That's what you probably
> > should investigate first.
> >
> > However, there's something you can try that may bypass fixing the
> > routing.  You can try changing the "bg" for yoda-based mounts in
> > /etc/fstab to "fg" and see if that helps:
> >
> > 	yoda:/data/yoda/a    /data/yoda/a         nfs     soft,fg 0 0
> > 	yoda:/data/yoda/b    /data/yoda/b         nfs     soft,fg 0 0
> >
> > That will retry the mounts in the foreground if they fail and it may
> > force the routing to occur in a more timely manner.  This is only an
> > attempt to bypass whatever weirdness is going on with the routing.  You
> > really do need to fix the network issue.
> 
> Hi Rick,
> 
> Changing bg to fg in /etc/fstab didn't work so I made entries in rc.local 
> to do the mounts and that worked. I will then try to determine why the 
> problem exists in the firrst place.

Glad you found a work around.  Another poster (sorry, I lost your name
but you know who you are) who made that "rc.local" suggestion also
mentioned a possible conflict between what you have in /etc/hosts and
NIS if you use it.  It could also be a conflict in DNS, again if you
use it.  So,  I suggest the following:

1. See what IP you have for yoda in /etc/hosts

2. Compare the /etc/hosts data against the NIS record if you use NIS.
You can find that data by doing "ypmatch yoda hosts.bynames".

3. Compare the /etc/hosts data against the DNS record if you use DNS.
You can find that data by doing "dig yoda"

Something in the IP resolution for yoda isn't right.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-                   Never try to outstubborn a cat.                  -
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