SUMMARY: NFS clients can't automount new disk without reboot

From: Patrick L. Nolan (pln@egret1.Stanford.EDU)
Date: Tue Mar 31 1998 - 14:08:05 CST


I had trouble with a new disk not appearing to the NFS clients. The
original question is at the bottom.

Bruce Rossiter and Russ Poffenberger both came up with the comprehensive
answer.

Here is Bruce's reply:

> /net is evil. If you can avoid using it, you'll be the big winner in
> the long run. ;-) Build a good automount map for the stuff people need, and
> use that. BTW, that was the official answer from Sun when I complained about
> this problem.
>
> Here's the problem. The client will only query the server for it's
> exported filesystem list when it needs to do a initial mount from that server
> via /net. After that, it will never query the server for it's list again,
> unless it manages to unmount all the filesystems in /net from the server (due
> to timeouts, and no processes accessing the /net/server/* filesystems).
>
> If it does unmount all the filesystems in /net from that server, then
> the next time a process references a filesystem from the server, it will start
> fresh (and query the server). If the client has a long-term mount that never
> gets unmounted, the client will not ask the server for it's export list again.
> :-(
>
> This is why you found that it worked on some clients, and why one
> client cleared up overnight.
>
There were also replies from Bill Benedetto, Chris Tubutis, kamal, David Evans,
Matthew Stier, Dave Floyd, Thomas Anders, Mariel Feder, and Suzanne Taylor.
Some of them grasped the basic idea without spelling it out in such detail. Other
worthwhile advice included making sure that time is synchronized between the
server and clients.

I also wish to apologize for the gratuitous apostrophe in the original
subject line. This is the type of spelling error I abhor. I'm very
embarrassed to have committed such a blunder in a public forum.

The original question:
>
> I installed a new disk on an NFS server, but the clients can't automount
> it unless they are rebooted. I thought I did all the right things, but I
> must have left something out. All systems are running Solaris 2.5.1.
>
> On the server, I attached the disk, ran newfs, put an entry in vfstab just
> like all the older ones, added an entry to dfstab, and ran shareall.
> When I run share, the new disk appears in the listing just like the others.
> The access options are the same as the older disks.
>
> On the clients I used the special /net directory. I created a link
> ln -s /net/server/path/newdisk /newdisk
> Then I ran "automount" to let the automounter get its bearings.
> On most machines, cd /newdisk produces "No such file or directory."
> It's the same for cd /net/server/path/newdisk. On one client out of eight,
> it worked OK right away. Another one fixed itself after sitting overnight.
> The others have to be rebooted; then they see everything OK.
>
> It's not a permission problem. "mount server:/path/newdisk /mnt" works
> with no complaints.
>
> Am I missing something?
>



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