[ale] fstab vs automounter for NFS home directories

[Todor Fassl]

But the main reason I think it's a firewall issue is that "showmount -e 
<servername>" doesn't work. That can't be because of a mapping problem, 
could it? I ran showmount under strace and it seemed to be failing to 
talk to the NFS server. I put a packet sniffer on the server and it 
never received any packets from the client when I ran showmount.

Even so, the mapping thing is worth investigating. If it wasn't for the 
showmount thing, I'd be slapping my head and saying, "Of course! It's a 
mapping issue." But maybe the showmount thing is a red herring.


On 05/31/2016 04:59 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> I use fstab for data dirs and automounter for home dirs. Many more users
> than data dirs so it saves some memory in each machine to only track active
> users.
>
> If automounter isn't working but manual mount is, it's not firewall but a
> mapping bug or a dns issue. I have to run my own dns and have even the dhcp
> machine set to use my dns. Part of that is for freeipa and other is for
> automount. I used the server IP for a while but have a reconfig approaching
> where names will make my life easier.
> On May 31, 2016 5:34 PM, "Todor Fassl" <fassl.tod at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Is there any drawback to mounting the NFS share for home directories in
>> the fstab versus using the automounter?
>>
>> For example, I could put a line in /etc/fstab like this:
>> nfshome:/export /home nfs4 defaults 0 0
>>
>> Or I could have the automounter mount /home/username when the user logs
>> in. I'm currently doing it via the automounter -- in fact, I always have.
>> I've never actually configured a machine to mount at boot time an nfs share
>> to use for home directories.
>>
>> PS: The reason I am thinking of not using the automounter is that we ran
>> out of office space in my building and we put a single user in another
>> building. I can't get the automounter to work. Mounting home directories
>> works if I type in a mount command:
>>
>> mount -t nfs nfshome:/export/username /home/username
>>
>> But the automounter does not work. Neither does showmount. If I type
>> "shomount -e nfshome", it times out after about 30 seconds. I suspect a
>> firewall issue wrt the portmapper (port 111). I put a packet sniffer on the
>> nfs file server and it usually gets a UDP packet on port 111 from a
>> workstation doing a showmount. But that packet does not arrive when the
>> showmount is done from the workstation with the problem.
>>
>> --
>> Todd
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>
>
>
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-- 
Todd