automount refuses to pick up mounts

[T.S.SHIVAKUMAR]

Hi!
I have been facing this funny problem for a very long time now.
Whenever some of the nfs server reboots, most of my HPs refuse to automount once the server is up; (eg. /net/server is empty) even otherwise, a mount may be dropped after a period of time.
Generally, rebooting the HPs works but again in a day or two the pain returns!
All the HPs run HPUX 10.20.
Changing the "AUTOFS" option in nfsconf to "AUTOFS=0" resolves this issue. Due to a change in NIS setup, it so happens that with this configuration, none of the NIS maps are picked up. Hence I am now forced to live with the "AUTOFS=1" option.Attached is the patching details which is constant across all the HPs.
Below is the extract from nfsconf:

#
MOUNTD_VER=3
#
#autofs configuration. See automount.1m and automountd.1m
#
#Depending on the variable AUTOFS, either AUTOFS or the old
#automount process will be executed.
#AUTOFS=0 - use the old automount process.
# 1 - use the new AutoFS.
#AUTOMOUNT_OPTIONS= - options to the AutoFS automount command
#AUTOMOUNTD_OPTIONS= - options to the AutoFS automountd daemon
#
# *** NOTE ****
#The AUTOMOUNT flag still needs to be set for either the old
#automount or new AutoFS to be started by the nfs.client script.
#
AUTOMOUNT_OPTIONS=
AUTOMOUNTD_OPTIONS=
AUTOFS=1
#
#nfs mount configuration. See mount_nfs.1m
#
# One can set the default NFS mount version
#
#MOUNT_VER=2 - mount using PV2
# =3 - mount using PV3 then fall back to PV2
# if not available
#NOTE: mount using the -o vers option will overide this
#variable
MOUNT_VER=3
"nfsconf" 103 lines, 3709 characters
Please advice on what could be the issue. The networks are perfect. I can only doubt the patching. What do I need ?
Thanks in advance,
Shivakumar

[Animesh Chakraborty]

Hi,
you need to delete the link created by NFS/auto mounter if exists.
Then try again.

Best of link
Animesh

[Kevin Wright]

Make sure you don't have both Automount and Autofs running..for processes, you should have
automound and autofs_proc running..
I would turn on logging, then check the log file, /var/adm/automount.log.

[T.S.Shivakumar_1]

Hi Kevin and Animesh,
Thanks for the feedbacks.
Kevin, only autofs_proc and and automountd are active.
I have activated logging by giving
AUTO_OPTIONS="-f $AUTO_MASTER -t 300 -v"
in nfsconf. Foll error is logged in syslog.log for a failed mount :-

Sep 18 09:48:44 austin automountd[717]: mount_get_devid: server comet not responding for /net/comet/opt
Sep 18 09:48:44 austin

The same works fine when rebooted.
Probably this should hint at the solution.
Awaiting a response,
Shivakumar

[Kevin Wright]

Well, it looks like your automount is working properly, remember, automountd is only a client. It looks like you would have the same problem if you tried to manually mount the /net/comet FS..You have problems on comet, the NFS server..check with nfsstat, ensure all are exported properly too.

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Looks like you have some problem on the nfs server itself. As suggested by Kevin, try to mount it manually (hard mount) when you get the problem. If it doesn't, then you need to check comet to see if anything is happening there like network timeouts.

-Sri