[Bug 504224] Re: NFS mounts at boot time prevent boot or print spurious errors

[Kat Amsterdam]

Proof of this bug in a screenshot. I have had my ubuntu customer in a
panic now twice due to this matter. It happens when the machine has been
turned off for the night. The next day he starts the machine (the nas
runs 24/7 but goes into sleep mode), but the nas is still sleeping, so
it doesn't react right away to the request to mount. The system hangs
with the message in the screenshot.

** Attachment added: "Photo of the bug"
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mountall/+bug/504224/+attachment/2242948/+files/2011-07-30%2013.47.13.jpg

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/504224

Title:
  NFS mounts at boot time prevent boot or print spurious errors

Status in “mountall” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “mountall” source package in Lucid:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: mountall

  karmic: mountall 1.0

  When mounting NFS shares at boot, the first mount attempt usually
  fails since rpc or portmap are not running, or the network itself is
  not up yet.

  These errors appear although the filesystem will be mounted
  successfully later on, so the user cannot distinguish them from "real"
  mount failures that need intervention by the admin.

  Even worse, when the NFS mounts happen to be for a mountpoint that
  mountall considers essential for boot (like /home), the user is
  dropped to an emergency shell and system refuses to boot.

  A temporary workaround is to add "nobootwait" for the affected
  mountpoints, but this causes the system to continue booting even if
  the mountpoint is not available when the network is set up correctly,
  i.e. if there is a real problem with the NFS server.

  Proposed fix:

  mountall should not try to mount any network file systems when called
  the first time. Only when the network is up and mountall receives
  SIGUSR1 it should try to do so. If this does not work at *that* point,
  mountall should print an error (and stop the boot for essential mount
  points) as before.

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