[Bug 525154] Re: mountall for /var races with rpc.statd

[Forest]

I'm still seeing this problem on a fully updated Natty.  My nfs mount
occasionally succeeds at boot, but most of the time it doesn't.  After
editing /etc/init/mountall.conf to log the mountall --debug output, I
see these messages in the log:

mounting /myremotedir
spawn: mount -t nfs -o rw,intr,retrans=180,async,noatime,nodiratime 10.0.95.4:/myremotedir /myremotedir
mount.nfs: rpc.statd is not running but is required for remote locking.
mount.nfs: Either use '-o nolock' to keep locks local, or start statd.
mount.nfs: an incorrect mount option was specified
mountall: mount /myremotedir [896] terminated with status 32

When the mount fails, "status statd" reports that statd is running,
which makes me think there is still a race condition here.

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but the 10.0.95.x network is reachable
via eth1, not eth0.

I see a lot of "fix released" notes on this bug report.  Has the fix
made it in to the Natty release repositories yet?  If so, it looks to me
like the fix needs some work.

** Also affects: mountall (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/525154

Title:
  mountall for /var races with rpc.statd

Status in “mountall” package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in “nfs-utils” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “portmap” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “mountall” source package in Lucid:
  New
Status in “nfs-utils” source package in Lucid:
  Fix Released
Status in “portmap” source package in Lucid:
  Fix Released
Status in “mountall” source package in Maverick:
  New
Status in “nfs-utils” source package in Maverick:
  Fix Released
Status in “portmap” source package in Maverick:
  Fix Released
Status in “mountall” source package in Natty:
  New
Status in “nfs-utils” source package in Natty:
  Fix Released
Status in “portmap” source package in Natty:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  If one has /var (or /var/lib or /var/lib/nfs for that matter) on its
  own filesystem the statd.conf start races with the mounting of /var as
  rpc.statd needs /var/lib/nfs to be available in order to work.

  I am sure this is not the only occurrence of this type of problem.

  A knee-jerk solution is to simply spin in statd.conf waiting for
  /var/lib/nfs to be available, but polling sucks, especially for
  something like upstart whose whole purpose is to be an event driven
  action manager.

  SRU justification: NFS mounts do not start reliably on boot in lucid
  and maverick (depending on the filesystem layout of the client system)
  due to race conditions in the startup of statd.  This should be fixed
  so users of the latest LTS can make reliable use of NFS.

  Regression potential:  Some systems may fail to mount NFS filesystems
  at boot time that didn't fail before.  Some systems may hang at boot.
  Some systems may hang while upgrading the packages (this version or in
  a future SRU).  I believe the natty update adequately guards against
  all of these possibilities, but the risk is there.

  TEST CASE:
  1. Configure a system with /var as a separate partition.
  2. Add one or more mounts of type 'nfs' to /etc/fstab.
  3. Boot the system.
  4. Verify whether statd has started (status statd) and whether all NFS filesystems have been mounted.
  5. Repeat 3-4 until the race condition is triggered.
  6. Upgrade to the new version of portmap and nfs-common from -proposed.
  7. Repeat steps 3-4 until satisfied that statd now starts reliably and all non-gss-authenticated NFSv3 filesystems mount correctly at boot time.

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