The answer was provided almost instantly by a helpful but anonymous user
from Sweden:
> Try adding a "rw" (or "ro" or "rq") option.
> I was able to reproduce your problem, and it goes away with an explicit
> rw.
And sure enough, that entry is the only line in my fstab that does not
include such an option.
I feel stupid for not spotting this, but still feel the behaviour is
rather misleading.
Bob
On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, Bob Vickers wrote:
> Dear Managers,
>
> I have a non-urgent but very strange problem: one of the lines in
> /etc/fstab seems to be invisible to the mount command! This NFS file
> system consistently fails to get mounted at boot-time (but no error
> messages) and it does not get mounted if you type 'mount -vat nfs'. Nor
> does it get mounted if you mount it by name unless you use the full
> version of the mount command with all parameters supplied. To my eye the
> line has exactly the same format as the ones on either side, and they work
> fine. I'm running Tru64 4.0G with PK3 (though same thing happened with
> PK2).
>
> Here is some evidence:
>
> platon# grep ras/CS /etc/fstab
> pythagoras:/CS /rmt/pythagoras/CS nfs nodev,nosuid,bg,intr 0 0
> platon# mount -vat nfs
> sartre on /rmt/sartre/staff: Device busy
> sartre on /rmt/sartre/pgrads: Device busy
> sartre on /rmt/sartre/aspect: Device busy
> sartre on /rmt/sartre/neurocolt: Device busy
> sartre on /rmt/sartre/neurowork: Device busy
> sartre on /rmt/sartre/life: Device busy
> pythagoras on /rmt/pythagoras/ugrads: Device busy
> pythagoras on /rmt/pythagoras/apps: Device busy
> engels on /rmt/engels/data: Device busy
> [ Note: no messages for /rmt/pythagoras/CS. Other file systems were
> already mounted ]
> platon# mount pythagoras:/CS
> mount: unknown special file or file system pythagoras:/CS.
> platon# mount /rmt/pythagoras/CS
> mount: unknown special file or file system /rmt/pythagoras/CS.
> platon# mount -t nfs -o nodev,nosuid,bg,intr pythagoras:/CS /rmt/pythagoras/CS
> platon# [ Hoorah, this worked ! ]
>
>
> There are no carriage returns or other unprintable characters (apart from
> tabs) in /etc/fstab, and there is a newline at the end. Here is an octal
> dump of the line concerned:
> platon$ grep as/CS /etc/fstab | od -c
> 0000000 p y t h a g o r a s : / C S
> 0000020 / r m t / p y t
> 0000040 h a g o r a s / C S n f s
> 0000060 n o d e v , n o s u i d , b g
> 0000100 , i n t r 0 0 \n
> 0000112
>
>
> Am I doing something really stupid here or is this a bug?
>
==============================================================
Bob Vickers R.Vickers_at_cs.rhul.ac.uk
Dept of Computer Science, Royal Holloway, University of London
WWW:
http://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/home/bobv
Phone: +44 1784 443691
Received on Thu Feb 07 2002 - 11:06:30 NZDT