[SOLVED] NFS mounts at boot on WAN, but not LAN

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 456

I have a gentoo desktop configured to mount an NFS directory from a server at boot. Previously, it was at a remote location, and correctly mounted the directory over the WAN. Recently, I moved it to the same LAN as the server, and now the directory doesn't mount at boot. However, Once the desktop boots up, I can manually mount them without a problem. Interestingly, this problem persists regardless if /etc/fstab uses the WAN or LAN address of the server.

Here's the fstab config:

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 22366

When it fails to mount at boot on the LAN, does it attempt to mount and get an error or does it skip attempting to mount? Understanding whether it tries and fails, or chooses not to try at all, will influence where we go next. On the assumption it tries and fails, what messages does it print? You used _netdev, which is good. Does the output indicate that the relevant networking is up before you see the output of the attempted mount?

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 456

It looks like it attempts the mount, but is unable, since I get this warning

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 456

Hi Folks, I'm still searching for a solution to this. The first thing I tried was to increase timeo from 14 to 30, since that might help if the network was slow to come up. That didn't seem likely, since I'm able to ssh into this computer pretty fast, but worth trying. That didn't help. Then, I tried simplifying the entry in /etc/fstab. Nothing in the old entry looked problematic, but it's probably best to keep things simple while debugging.

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 456

And one more possible clue: I've noticed that if I create a file on the shared directory using the machine that's having the problem, it doesn't appear right away to other machines on the network. The lag is long, maybe 30s to a minute. I'm not sure if this related, but this second issue seems new too.

freke · Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2024 6:39 pm Post subject:

gentoo_ram · Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2024 11:29 pm Post subject:

This answer assumes OpenRC startup. If you are systemd, nevermind.

How is the variable "rc_depend_strict" set in /etc/rc.conf?

If it's YES then I don't think any of the network services will start until all network interfaces are up. If it isn't then I think the network services will start immediately since the loopback interface always starts up.

It sounds like maybe you really want YES for that setting. That's how I have it set.

Or maybe you have you rc_parallel set?

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 456

Thanks, this system is using OpenRC.

I tried both of those changes, "rc_depend_strict" /etc/rc.conf and rc_need="net.enp4s0" in /etc/conf.d/netmount, and neither worked, either separately or in combination. Both seem sensible. Are there any other diagnostics we could try?

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 22366

You showed earlier that netmount will wait for the network to be available. This seems like a good thing. What happens when netmount ceases waiting and tries the mount? Does it ever try the mount?

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 456

Is there a log I could check? /var/log/messages doesn't seem to mention anything about an attempted mount.

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 22366

Relevant output should be on the console. You might also be able to capture it with the openrc boot logging facility.

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 456

Here's a chunk from /var/log/rc.log that contains messages about enp4s0 and netmount.

grknight · Retired Dev Joined: 20 Feb 2015 Posts: 1832

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 456

I noticed one more clue: The shared folder mounts at boot correct *if* the machine's local network isn't connected to the WAN. (I found this out only because my internet was out yesterday). That seems so weird, since both the server and the host are on the local network. How could that affect this problem?

grknight, could you say a bit more? Which behavior would be disabled by modules_enp4s0="!ifplugd"?

grknight · Retired Dev Joined: 20 Feb 2015 Posts: 1832

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 456

Interesting, /etc/conf.d/net did not exist, so I created it and added

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 456

Hi Folks, I'm still trying to trouble-shoot this item. I added these two lines to /etc/rc.conf

grknight · Retired Dev Joined: 20 Feb 2015 Posts: 1832

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 456

grknight, that did the trick. I've rebooted several times to eliminate a false positive, and this solution is holding.

So, it seems like the network interface came up before netmount, or netmout waited as it should, but the specific IP wasn't available right away. Does that sound right? I'm going to mark this thread as SOLVED, but anyone wants to add closing thoughts it might help future readers.