NFS Mounts Backgrounding

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there --

I am attempting to mount several NFS filesystems on a Fedora Core 2 workstation. The server that is exporting the filesystems is an HP-UX 11.00 system. I went through the motions of adding the workstation in question to the appropriate lines on the server's exports file and then ran the exportfs -a command for the changes to go into effect.

I then modified the fstab file on the workstation and then ran the mount -a command. The following message appeared on screen:

mount: backgrounding ":/diskarray/stripe3/photon_common_clinical"

mount: backgrounding ":/diskarray/stripe10/photon_data2/cases/adult-general"

I ran the df command and saw the NFS filesystems in question had not been mounted. What else do I need to do to correct this? Thanks.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

If you have access to the hpux box as root:

tail -f /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log

Then do the mount -av on the Linux box. The v gets you verbose output, which may point out a networking issue.

In this case backgrounding probably means the mount is never going to happen, because it should not take very long for an NFS mount.

If there is a configuration issue on the HP-UX side and a connection attempt it will be logged in syslog.

You may need to enhance logging on the hpux machine to get good diagnostics. inetd -l

SEP

[Gopi Sekar]

few things to ensure:

* ensure you can mount the share from another machine. simple way to do this to do NFS mount within HP-UX box itself. This will ensure that file system is actually exported

before actually addding it to workstation fstab file, try it manually from command line. see whether it is hanging.

The most likely reason could be that portmap service is not running on ur fedora box. run service portmap start and then try. if it works make sure you enable portmap service to start in system startup

Regards,
Gopi

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there --

I rechecked the fstab file and I discovered the problem was a typo error on my part. Once I made the correction, the NFS mounts were successfully loaded. Thanks for the help.

[Mark Ellzey]

Andrew,

I'm not sure it's a good idea to put NFS mounts in your fstab. I've experienced hangs if the remote NFS server is not up.

I put all my NFS mounts in /etc/auto* files and let automountd handle all the details. That way if the remote server is down, the local server doesn't care.

Just my 2cts,
Mark

[Andrew Kaplan]

Mark --

Thanks for your input. I'll experiment with that approach.