[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#426071: initscripts: Continued 'mountnfs.sh' issues with multiple onboard NICs...

[Daniel Freedman]

Package: initscripts
Version: 2.86.ds1-38
Severity: important

- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-4-amd64
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages initscripts depends on:
ii  debianut 2.17                            Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  e2fsprog 1.39+1.40-WIP-2006.11.14+dfsg-2 ext2 file system utilities and lib
ii  libc6    2.3.6.ds1-13                    GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  lsb-base 3.1-23.1                        Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip
ii  mount    2.12r-19                        Tools for mounting and manipulatin
ii  sysvinit 2.86.ds1-38                     System-V-like utilities


Hi,

A number of bugs have been filed (and some closed) based upon issues with
'mountnfs.sh'.  However, even the recently reported fixes involving the
ASYNCMOUNTNFS boot option (introduced with 2.86.ds1-35) do not seem to fix
my issues (unless I explicitly set ASYNCMOUNTNFS to no, which is not the
default, and engenders behavior which I do not desire).

It seems like much of this problem derives from etch's movement of the NFS
mount procedures to '/etc/network/if-up.d/mountnfs' (although I recognize
the technical importance of such a move).  My hardware/configuration setup
is fairly standard, in my opinion, much more so than the diskless nodes that
similarly experience these problems (although I regularly use such for HPC
work and thus am very sympathetic to their needs). The only possible
complicating scenario is that the motherboard has multiple on-board ethernet
adapters; however, I only employ one of them (always properly identified by
the kernel at boot as eth0), and it comes up immediately (configured with
static IP address via '/etc/network/interfaces').

With a default etch install, NFS shares do not properly mount upon boot, nor
will they properly mount upon invocation of '/etc/init.d/mountnfs.sh start'.
However, they WILL properly mount upon direct invocation of
'/etc/network/if-up.d/mountnfs' (either with the environmental variable
'FROMINITD=yes' set or not).

The real problem appears to me to be the section in the init.d 'mountnfs.sh'
script:

        # Using 'no !=' instead of 'yes =' to make sure async nfs
        # mounting is the default even without a value in
        # /etc/default/rcS
        if [ no != "$ASYNCMOUNTNFS" ] ; then
                do_wait_async_mount
        else
                FROMINITD=yes /etc/network/if-up.d/mountnfs
        fi
        ;;

On cursory examination, it doesn't appear to me that
'/etc/network/if-up.d/mountnfs' is executed unless ASYNCMOUNTNFS is set to
no in '/etc/default/rcS'.  In fact, only such a setting enabled this
'mountnfs.sh' script to work for me (still not at boot time, though)...

To try to reduce the problem phasespace by ruling out other issues of
similar bugs, I should mention that I don't have any problem with
'/var/run/network/mountnfs' remaining after shutdown and preventing proper
startup.

I would greatly appreciate guidance with this, and would recommend (at the
least) much clearer documentation in '/usr/share/doc/initscripts' and
relevant init scripts.

Thank you for all of your work (packaging and otherwise).

Best wishes (and Happy Memorial Day, for the US-centric),
Daniel


PS '/etc/network/interfaces':

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address 192.168.1.6
        netmask 255.255.0.0
        network 192.168.0.0
        broadcast 192.168.255.255
        gateway 192.168.0.1


PPS '/etc/fstab':

proc       /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1  / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sda5  none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda   /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
foo:/home  /home nfs rw,hard,bg,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 0 0
bar:/data  /data nfs rw,hard,bg,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 0 0



-- 
Daniel A. Freedman <freedman at physics.cornell.edu>, Graduate Fellow
  Electronic Structure Calculations, LASSP, Cornell University