Updated on 2024-11-04 GMT+08:00

Mounting a File System Automatically

File system mount information may be lost after a server is restarted. You can configure auto mount on the server to avoid losing the mount information.

Restrictions

Because service startup sequences in different OSs vary, some servers running CentOS may not support the following auto mount plans. In this case, manually mount the file system.

Procedure (Linux)

  1. Log in to the server as user root.
  2. Run the vi /etc/fstab command to edit the /etc/fstab file.

    At the end of the file, add the file system information, for example:
    Shared path /local_path nfs vers=3,timeo=600,noresvport,nolock,tcp 0 0

    Replace Shared path and /local_path with actual values. You can obtain the shared path from the Shared Path column of the file system. Each record in the /etc/fstab file corresponds to a mount. Each record has six fields, as described in Mount Fields.

    For optimal system performance, configure file system information based on the previous example. If needed, you can customize certain mount options. However, the customization may affect system performance.

  3. Press Esc, enter :wq, and press Enter to save and exit.

    After the preceding configurations are complete, the system reads the mount information from the /etc/fstab file to automatically mount the file system when the server restarts.

  4. (Optional) View the updated content of the /etc/fstab file.

    cat /etc/fstab

    Figure 1 shows the updated file content.

    Figure 1 Updated file content

  5. If auto mount fails due to a network issue, add the sleep option and a time in front of the mount command in the rc.local file, and mount the file system after the NFS service is started.

    sleep 10s && sudo mount -t nfs -o vers=3,timeo=600,noresvport,nolock,tcp Shared path/local_path

Mount Fields

Table 1 describes the mount fields.

Table 1 Mount fields

Field

Description

Shared path

The address of the file system to be mounted. Set it to the shared path in the mount command in Mounting an NFS File System to ECSs (Linux).

/local_path

The directory created on the server for mounting the file system. Set it to the local path in the mount command in Mounting an NFS File System to ECSs (Linux).

nfs

The file system or partition mount type. Set it to nfs.

vers=3,timeo=600,noresvport,nolock,tcp

Mount options. Use commas (,) to separate multiple options.

  • vers: The file system version. Value 3 indicates the NFSv3 protocol.
  • timeo: The waiting time before the NFS client retransmits a request. The unit is 0.1 second. The recommended value is 600.
  • noresvport: Whether the NFS client uses a new TCP port when it re-establishes a network connection to the NFS server. It is strongly recommended that you specify noresvport, which ensures that your file system remains uninterrupted after a network reconnection or recovery.
  • nolock: Whether to use the NLM protocol to lock files on the server. If nolock is specified, the lock is valid only for applications on the same host. It is invalid for applications on any other hosts. nolock is recommended. If this parameter is not specified, lock is used by default. Then, other servers cannot write data to the file system.
  • tcp: The TCP transmission protocol.

0

Choose whether to use dump to back up the file system.

  • 0: dump backup is not used.
  • An integer greater than zero means that the file system is backed up. A smaller value has a higher check priority.

0

Choose whether to use fsck to check the file system when the server starts and specify the check sequence.

  • 0: File systems are not checked.
  • By default, this field is set to 1 for the root directory. The values for other directories start from 2, and one with a smaller integer is checked earlier than that with a larger integer.