Re: How to mount NFS server with autofs

[griadooss]

Here is my auto.master

/mnt     /etc/auto.nfs      --timeout 10

here is my auto.nfs

fs-home         -rw,soft,intr   192.168.19.101:/home/geoff/
fs-torrents     -rw,soft,intr   192.168.19.101:/media/torrents 
fs-media        -rw,soft,intr   192.168.19.101:/media/media 
fs-software     -rw,soft,intr   192.168.19.101:/media/software
fs-dyndata      -rw,soft,intr   192.168.19.101:/media/dyndata
fs-databin      -rw,soft,intr   192.168.19.101:/media/databin

I have run # systemctl enable autofs.service and

autofs
nfs
rpcbind 

are all ENABLED and ACTIVE

I can mount the all the lines above in auto.fs via fstab without issue, and manually like this:

mount 192.168.19.101:/media/databin  /mnt

Why does Autofs not perform the task?? It gives no feedback as if not active?? Is there a log i can read?
What must i do to activate Autofs on boot … or by any other means for that matter???

I have done this before … few months back … eazy peazy!!! … Why not now??

*openSUSE Leap 42.1
KDE Plasma 5.4.3, Kernel 4.1.12-1-default

[griadooss]

@linuxoidoz

This is a simple and quick Howto on setting up reasonably secure NFS file server and clients in a home network and dynamically mounting NFS shares with autofs. Basic openSUSE Linux and networking knowledge is assumed.

<CLIP>

Autofs:

1. Open and edit file /etc/auto.master

• Add this line: /mnt/DataServer /etc/auto.misc --timeout 10

2. Open and edit file /etc/auto.misc

• Add this line: Data -fstype=nfs,rw,soft,intr,nosuid,nodev,tcp,retry=10,rsize=32768,wsize=32768 192.168.1.2:/

3. Restart autofs in shell: /etc/init.d/autofs restart

Now, open Dolphin and click on Places -> NFS Server - it should mount the server export folder automatically.

… and further … /etc/init.d/autofs restart … does nothing as there is no entry of autofs under /etc/init.d …??? I LEAP different perhaps???

[deano_ferrari]

@griadooss

… and further … /etc/init.d/autofs restart … does nothing as there is no entry of autofs under /etc/init.d …??? I LEAP different perhaps???

Use

systemctl restart autofs

[griadooss]

@deano_ferrari

Use

systemctl restart autofs

Running that command clearly does something as it takes a second or two to complete … however after running there still is no entry for autofs under /etc/init.d

I thought i might manually add the ‘mount points’ under mnt to see if that does anything as autofs is clearly NOT creating the mount point that is mapped in autofs file.

However, when i try to add a directory under /mnt i get this:

# linux-a1do:/mnt # mkdir databin
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘databin’: Permission denied

so if i cant create a mount point as su … how will the system???

[gogalthorp]

Did you try mkinitrd to rebuild systemd?

[deano_ferrari]

@griadooss

Running that command clearly does something as it takes a second or two to complete … however after running there still is no entry for autofs under /etc/init.d

I thought i might manually add the ‘mount points’ under mnt to see if that does anything as autofs is clearly NOT creating the mount point that is mapped in autofs file.

However, when i try to add a directory under /mnt i get this:

# linux-a1do:/mnt # mkdir databin
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘databin’: Permission denied

so if i cant create a mount point as su … how will the system???

That’s because you need root privileges to do that.

[nrickert]

@griadooss

However, when i try to add a directory under /mnt i get this:

# linux-a1do:/mnt # mkdir databin
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘databin’: Permission denied

so if i cant create a mount point as su … how will the system???

I think that’s because your “auto.nfs” file gives “autofs” complete control over “/mnt”. I use “/nfsmounts” instead of “/mnt” because I want to be able to manually mount in “/mnt”.

[deano_ferrari]

@griadooss

Running that command clearly does something as it takes a second or two to complete … however after running there still is no entry for autofs under /etc/init.d

I thought i might manually add the ‘mount points’ under mnt to see if that does anything as autofs is clearly NOT creating the mount point that is mapped in autofs file.

No, systemd does things differently. You check the status with

systemctl status autofs

Also, you should be able to observer the automount daemon is running with

ps -A|grep auto

Keep in mind that autofs won’t actually mount the remote shares until they are actually needed ie accessed explicitly.

[deano_ferrari]

@nrickert

I think that’s because your “auto.nfs” file gives “autofs” complete control over “/mnt”. I use “/nfsmounts” instead of “/mnt” because I want to be able to manually mount in “/mnt”.

Yes, I think that is right. There should be no subdirectories manually added in /mnt if autofs is using that mount point.

[arvidjaar]

@griadooss

Why does Autofs not perform the task??*
*

How exactly do you determine this? What do you expect and what do you get? You never explained what actually failed.

@griadooss

Running [systemctl] clearly does something as it takes a second or two to complete … however after running there still is no entry for autofs under /etc/init.d

So autofs “does not perform the task” because /etc/init.d/autofs is missing? This is the only failure I see in your description.

However, when i try to add a directory under /mnt i get this:

# linux-a1do:/mnt # mkdir databin
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘databin’: Permission denied

Which is quite correct and indicates that autofs is active for /mnt.

So let’s start from the beginning - what does not work?

[griadooss]

@arvidjaar

How exactly do you determine this? What do you expect and what do you get? You never explained what actually failed.

So let’s start from the beginning - what does not work?

Okay … so went through everything again … and when i ran the line ‘systemctl status autofs’, even though i get “Active running” returned … at the end of the output i got a message:

lookup_init:136: lookup(yp): map auto.master: Local domain name not set 

… so doing some research i find this => http://goo.gl/U6zcj8

so i query my ‘domainname’ … [but this is just a “simple” home LAN with PC file server and laptop] … and find it returns (none)!!

So i pick a domain name that i own and set it via: domainname [my.domain] … and re-query the autofs status … and the ‘alert’ goes away!!

Great i think!

so status output is now:

# systemctl status autofs
autofs.service - Automounts filesystems on demand
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/autofs.service; enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2016-01-03 05:10:27 AEDT; 21s ago
     Docs: man:automount(8)
           man:autofs(5)
  Process: 1642 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/automount $AUTOFS_OPTIONS -p /var/run/automount.pid (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 1644 (automount)
   CGroup: /system.slice/autofs.service
           └─1644 /usr/sbin/automount -p /var/run/automount.pid

… so now in Dolphin i create a place FS-HOME {/mnt/fs-home} … where the line

fs-home         -rw,soft,intr   192.168.19.101:/home/geoff 

exists in my auto.fs file (which happily mounts via fstab), and the master mount point of

/mnt

exists in auto.master … as given at beginning of this post …but when i click on the place link in Dolphin i get

The file or folder /mnt/fs-home does not exist.

and as discussed above i cannot create such a folder … apparently it is done by the system … which is not happening??

What might i be missing here???

[deano_ferrari]

…but when i click on the place link in Dolphin i get

The file or folder /mnt/fs-home does not exist.

and as discussed above i cannot create such a folder … apparently it is done by the system … which is not happening??

What might i be missing here???

What I think might be happening here - Since you are using autofs, the share will be ‘auto-mounted’ only when it accessed, so access the share first with

ls /mnt/fs-home

Then it should be available until the time out value (in your case 10 seconds) is reached, whereupon it will be unmounted again.

[nrickert]

I don’t normally use Dolphin (the unix shell is my preferred file manager). However, as an experiment, I opened Dolphin.

I first clicked on the autofs directory (the equivalent of your “/mnt”). That showed me a mount point within that directory.

I next clicked on the mount point. Nothing happened. I waited a few seconds and clicked again. This time I saw the contents of the NFS mounted file system.

It looks as if Dolphin is doing a quick test for what’s there, but it is quicker than autofs, so it doesn’t see anything at first.

If I list it from the shell (with “ls”), then “ls” will wait for it to be mounted. It looks as if Dolphin is not doing that wait.

[deano_ferrari]

@nrickert

I don’t normally use Dolphin (the unix shell is my preferred file manager). However, as an experiment, I opened Dolphin.

I first clicked on the autofs directory (the equivalent of your “/mnt”). That showed me a mount point within that directory.

I next clicked on the mount point. Nothing happened. I waited a few seconds and clicked again. This time I saw the contents of the NFS mounted file system.

It looks as if Dolphin is doing a quick test for what’s there, but it is quicker than autofs, so it doesn’t see anything at first.

If I list it from the shell (with “ls”), then “ls” will wait for it to be mounted. It looks as if Dolphin is not doing that wait.

It looks that way to me as well.

[deano_ferrari]

With respect to the message you were geting

lookup_init:136: lookup(yp): map auto.master: Local domain name not set

I found this bugzilla report which suggested that if a NIS map is not being used, then “+auto.master” can be removed from /etc/auto.master.

[griadooss]

@deano_ferrari

What I think might be happening here - Since you are using autofs, the share will be ‘auto-mounted’ only when it accessed, so access the share first with

ls /mnt/fs-home

Then it should be available until the time out value (in your case 10 seconds) is reached, whereupon it will be unmounted again.

ls /mnt/fs-home
ls: cannot access /mnt/fs-home: No such file or directory

>:(

[griadooss]

@deano_ferrari

With respect to the message you were geting

lookup_init:136: lookup(yp): map auto.master: Local domain name not set

I found this bugzilla report which suggested that if a NIS map is not being used, then “+auto.master” can be removed from /etc/auto.master.

ok … so commented out “+auto.master” with no effect.

… would there be any log files that might give a clue perhaps???

[griadooss]

… and just to prove NFS is working … uncommented out the appropriate line in fstab …

192.168.19.101:/home/griadooss    /media/fs-home        nfs    defaults 0 0

… and ran mount … with this result:

ls /media/fs-home
.Xauthority    .directory  .gtkrc-2.0  **.nv**                  .xim.template        **Downloads****bin**
.bash_history  .emacs      .i18n       .nvidia-settings-rc  .xinitrc.template**Music****public_html**
.bashrc        .esd_auth   .inputrc    **.pki**                 .xsession-errors     **Pictures**
**.cache****.fonts****.kde4**       .profile             .xsession-errors-:0  **Public**
**.config****.gnome****.local****.sane****Desktop****Templates**
**.dbus****.gnupg****.mozilla****.thumbnails****Documents****Videos**

… admittedly it is not operating on /mnt … as has been pointed out that mount point is reserved for autofs … so okay, i will change the autofs mount point from /mnt to /media … see if that works!

[griadooss]

… nope! changed auto.master to use /mynfsmount as the auto mount point … manually created it as /mynfsmount … autofs restarted … status checked ,… even rebooted … with same result!!!

Come on guys!! … it must be something very simple and basic that i am missing here !

autofs is running … nfs service is working … why is AUTOFS not responding to on demand mount requests???

… as an afterthought checked the LAN settings … the router, the NFS server and the laptop all reference the same domain of ‘home.gateway’.

[deano_ferrari]

@griadooss

ok … so commented out “+auto.master” with no effect.

… would there be any log files that might give a clue perhaps???

What do you mean with no effect? It won’t help with accessing the NFS share, just the domain message you were getting, and in any case will only take effect when autofs is restarted.