topic Mount remote NFS filesystem on boot shows "Permission denied" error - mount -a after boot is working in Operating System - HP-UX

Mount remote NFS filesystem on boot shows "Permission denied" error - mount -a after boot is working

Rudolf Fischer — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 14:31:56 GMT

Hi all,

we are working with HP-UX 11.11 and facing the problem that a remote NFS filesystem exported from a windows 2008R2 server is not mounted at boot time. When the boot of the HP rp3440 box is finished a "mount -a" is working fine and the NFS filesystem is mounted.

In /etc/rc.log we can see this error message:

Output from "/sbin/rc2.d/S430nfs.client start":
----------------------------
starting NFS CLIENT networking

    starting up the rpcbind
    rpcbind already started, using pid: 1270
    starting up the BIO daemons
    /usr/sbin/biod 16
    Reading in /etc/exports
    starting up the Status Monitor daemon
    /usr/sbin/rpc.statd
    starting up the Lock Manager daemon
    /usr/sbin/rpc.lockd
    starting up the AutoFS daemon
    /usr/lib/netsvc/fs/enh_autofs/automountd
    Running the AutoFS command interface
    /usr/sbin/automount
    mounting remote NFS file systems ...
nfs mount: mount_nfs: mount: /austau_<servername>/austausch: Permission denied
FAILURE CODE: 1
    Mount failed! Possible local filesystem mount.

The enty in /etc/fstab looks like this:

<servername>:AUSTAUSCH /austau_<servername>/austausch nfs soft,noac,timeo=50,acregmin=0,
acregmax=0,acdirmin=0,acdirmax=0,proto=udp 0 0

We tried to alter the order of the mount on boot, so that it was the last action on boot time, but with no success. What could still cause this issue? What is different when the mount command is executed at boot and if it is executed manually after boot? Please help me to get an answer.

Thank you.

Re: Mount remote NFS filesystem on boot shows "Permission denied" error - mount -a after b

pooderbill — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 16:34:57 GMT

Permission denied is almost meaningless for troubleshooting, and it is unlikely you change anything in HP-UX to fix the issue except to apply the latest patches for networking and especially for NFS. For 11.11, there are several dozen patches related to NFS. I would run a patch assesment at the HP Support Center (http://h20565.www2.hpe.com/portal/site/hpsc/) and bring your system up to date. This is especially important since you are connecting two very different OS platforms.

Re: Mount remote NFS filesystem on boot shows "Permission denied" error - mount -a after b

Rudolf Fischer — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 06:49:48 GMT

Think also that I cannot avoid to install the most recent patches. But which explanation is there that the same mount command is not working during boot of the server and it is working fine after the boot is finished? There must be a difference.

Re: Mount remote NFS filesystem on boot shows "Permission denied" error - mount -a after b

pooderbill — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 10:55:16 GMT

There are many differences when first booting versus running mount after bootup is finished. This is especially true if you are using Autofs. Without being able to patch NFS and Autofs, a workaround would be to add the noauto option to fstab, then create a new /sbin/init.d script that runs after the last initialization script. This script would just have the mount command as specified in fstab.

Re: Mount remote NFS filesystem on boot shows "Permission denied" error - mount -a after b

ranganath ramachandra — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 15:55:52 GMT

(I have no knowledge of NFS/RPC etc, so this may be only speculation)

The message saying something about local mount made me wonder whether host name resolution was working well. The messages about rpc daemons too might be relevant. A web search with the terms automount and rpc turns up the "Troubleshooting rpc.mountd" section of @Anonymous?'s book "Optimizing NFS Performance ...". While the symptoms addressed are not exactly the same, DNS and RPC issues are suspected as causes. I guess, around boot time, each of these subsystems could be in a state different from a later "steady" state?

Re: Mount remote NFS filesystem on boot shows "Permission denied" error - mount -a after b

Dave Olker — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 16:20:05 GMT

If we go by the only data we have, which is more of a symptom than actual data, all we know is the NFS mount is failing during boot and succeeding after boot. A "Permission denied" error is almost always the result of the NFS server rejecting the mount request for some reason.

If this were two HP-UX systems I could offer detailed steps to troubleshoot why the NFS server is rejecting the initial mount request and allowing the later request. Since the NFS server is Microsoft, you may need to enlist their help to troubleshoot why their NFS server code is rejecting the initial mount request.

A few questions:

Did this setup ever work? Is this NFS mount failing during boot a new behavior? If so, when did it change?
Do other NFS clients see the same problem or only this client?
Is this NFS client able to mount filesystems during boot from other NFS servers successfully?

Since the only thing we have at this point is two NFS mount attempts, my suggestion would be to start a Wireshark collection on the Windows server and capture both the failing NFS mount request during the client's boot time and the successful request after the client is booted. You can filter the collection based on the HP-UX client's IP address to limit the noise in the trace.

This data should show conclusively whether the NFS client is sending identical NFS mount requests to the server and whether the server is rejecting the first request and accepting the 2nd request. Once you have this data, look at the two NFS mount requests and see if you can identify *any* differences between the requests.

Dave

Re: Mount remote NFS filesystem on boot shows "Permission denied" error - mount -a after b

Rudolf Fischer — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 08:16:26 GMT

Thank you all,

Since the application running on this host is very old and every change can be associated with risks I have decided to implement the proposal of pooderbill. Everything else would be too complicated