🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug11.033436.27287@u.washington.edu> olsenc@milton.u.washington.edu (Clint Olsen) writes:

??   I'm trying to change the /etc/fstab database to add a nfs
??   mount in it, but running /etc/mount -a does not seem to
??   reread this database.  I'm trying to mount /usr/local to
??   /usr/local on a Sun Sparc 2.
??   ..... stuff deleted ...
??
??   I added the line like this:
??
??   kodiak:/usr/local /usr/local nfs rw 0 0
??
??   Even if I did it wrong, mount should at least give me some
??   errors, but it won't even do that!

As far as I found out, /etc/fstab is used early on in the boot process
to mount the root disk, before the network is even up. 
The way to mount remote disks is via the netinfo database, by using 
something like
niload fstab . < /etc/fstab
(or another file, where you keep your remode fstab entries). 
Here is a sample:

hardy{~}[52> nidump fstab . 
/dev/sd0a / 4.3 rw,noquota,noauto 0 1 
golem:/ /Net nfs rw,bg,soft,net,intr,nosuid,noquota,retry=4,timeout=16,rsize=512,wsize=512 0 0 
lynx:/ /Net nfs rw,bg,soft,net,intr,nosuid,noquota,retry=4,timeout=16,rsize=512,wsize=512 0 0 

I find that, contrary to man-pages on mount, using a soft rw mount via slip
works most of the time, and avoids hanging the system if the connection is down. 

Another hint: I use cron to regularly nidump crucial information, such as 
passwd, fstab, hosts, printcap, services, ... into flat files which I can
use later to niload into the netinfo database, in case the latter gets 
corrupted (it happenned). 
--
Hardy 
-----
Meinhard E. Mayer,  Department of Physics, UC Irvine 
e-mail: hardy@golem.ps.uci.edu (preferred) or MMAYER@UCI.BITNET