automatically mounted SMB file systems fail to mount on startup

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 Support Pack 1
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Support Pack 1

Situation

SLES ... configured with a line similar to the following one in the /etc/fstab file ...
//192.168.0.1/data /mnt/cifsdata cifs rw,credentials=/root/credentials.txt 0 0

SMB file systems specified to mount on startup in /etc/fstab fail to mount. After a full boot, the root user can re-mount the filesystems manually without error. The startup failures are identified by the following messages in the/var/log/messagesfile :

kernel:  CIFS VFS: Error connecting to IPv4 socket. Aborting operation

kernel:  CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -101

Resolution

To work around this issue, create a new startup script that re-mounts the CIFS/SMBFS file systems after all other startup scripts have been executed. An additional work around is to add a delay to the startup script by doing the following :

Open the /etc/init.d/smbfs file.
Locate the "start)" line. This will be inside of a "case" section, and is what runs when the service is started.
Create a new line below the "start)" line consisting of :
sleep 30
Adjust (increase the sleep time) as neccesary if the file system fails to mount.

Additional Information

This issue is encountered when the network is not completely started (e.g. the server or workstation does not yet have an IP address or is able to communicate), and the local "client" for the network based filesystem attempts to establish that connection.

The number associated with "sleep" is the number of seconds that sleep will wait until proceeding. The objective with the sleep command is to delay the mounting of the file system until the network has established the network connection.

Disclaimer

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