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How to make fstab work on Debian 10?

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Maxim
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How to make fstab work on Debian 10?

#1 Post by Maxim »

On all the Linuxes that I've tried before, whenever one puts something in /etc/fstab it gets automatically mounted when the machine is restarted, however after installing Debian 10, the same mechanism doesn't seem to work on it.

After restart, the mount folder is empty and is not listed in the mounts.

I had to add "sudo mount -a" to crontab @restart to get them to show up, but is there a more "proper" way for Debian 10 to recognize fstab the way other Debians do?

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Re: How to make fstab work on Debian 10?

#2 Post by wizard10000 »

fstab works just fine in Debian 10. Think you could share your fstab so we can have a look?
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Maxim
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Re: How to make fstab work on Debian 10?

#3 Post by Maxim »

//hostname/Share /Share cifs _netdev,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777,username=<NAME>,password=<PASSWORD>,rw,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

Like, I said, it works fine when I do "sudo mount -a" so the settings seem to be fine, but upon restart it's just not there.

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Re: How to make fstab work on Debian 10?

#4 Post by L_V »

You can try to add this as mount options:

Code: Select all

noauto,x-systemd.automount

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Re: How to make fstab work on Debian 10?

#5 Post by Maxim »

That looks like it worked, but why do i need to add "noauto"? :?

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Re: How to make fstab work on Debian 10?

#6 Post by L_V »

noauto: to make it clear that auto mounting process will be managed by x-systemd.automount, and nothing else.
You can try to remove noauto, it may works. If not .. just keep it !

man systemd.mount

noauto, auto
With noauto, the mount unit will not be added as a dependency for local-fs.target or remote-fs.target.
This means that it will not be mounted automatically during boot, unless it is pulled in by some other unit.
The auto option has the opposite meaning and is the default.
Note that the noauto option has an effect on the mount unit itself only — if x-systemd.automount is used (see above), then the matching automount unit will still be pulled in by these targets.

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Re: How to make fstab work on Debian 10?

#7 Post by Maxim »

Interesting, I'm going to have to read up on that a bit more, thanks for your help, the mount is working for now

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Re: How to make fstab work on Debian 10? [solved, sort of, Debian 11]

#8 Post by boldstripe »

My Thinkpad T450s under Debian 11 Bullseye does not automount network shares in my /etc/fstab on boot, but only because the internal WiFi is so slow at connecting to my network. Like others,

Code: Select all

sudo mount -a
worked after boot, so the fstab entries are OK, even without any special options. Here is what I have:

Code: Select all

//192.168.1.220/backups/        /media/Backups  cifs    credentials=/home/myusername/.smb-freenas,uid=1000,iocharset=utf8,noperm
The solution for me: plug in an Ethernet cable, the shares automount on boot, even with the above. Under WiFi only, none of the options to wait for network etc helped, although they caused no harm either: 'sudo mount -a' continued to mount all my shares after boot even when I tried them.

I may replace my Intel AC 7265 card, itself not original, with an Intel AC 8265, said to work better under Linux with this machine, to see if it helps. I will probably use some of the options recommended then.

It seems these tradtional fstab entries like mine are read by some systemd magic and turned into a systemd service. When I was having failures (when I used WiFi only), here is what I got from a status check. You can see the error on boot when the 'Network is unreachable'. Restarting the service, as shown in the last line here, nicely mounted the drives too:

Code: Select all

user@thinkdeb:~$ systemctl status media-Backups.mount
● media-Backups.mount - /media/Backups
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/fstab; generated)
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2021-08-08 15:34:25 EDT; 54s ago
      Where: /media/Backups
       What: //192.168.1.220/backups/
       Docs: man:fstab(5)
             man:systemd-fstab-generator(8)
        CPU: 13ms

Aug 08 15:34:25 thinkdeb systemd[1]: Mounting /media/Backups...
Aug 08 15:34:25 thinkdeb mount[1672]: mount error(101): Network is unreachable
Aug 08 15:34:25 thinkdeb mount[1672]: Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs) and kernel log messa>
Aug 08 15:34:25 thinkdeb systemd[1]: media-Backups.mount: Mount process exited, code=exited, status=32/n/a
Aug 08 15:34:25 thinkdeb systemd[1]: media-Backups.mount: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Aug 08 15:34:25 thinkdeb systemd[1]: Failed to mount /media/Backups.
user@thinkdeb:~$ systemctl restart media-Backups.mount
user@thinkdeb:~$
A word of warning!: if you discover it, don't try and simply 'enable' systemd-networkd-wait-online.service because it has no timeout and your boot will hang at the point of waiting for the Network, which apparently never happens. It was originally disabled on my system. If you know what you are doing (which I do not), you can probably set a timeout when you enable it. My fix at this point was to plug in the Ethernet, and the boot rapidly recovered--and mounted my network shares!
Instructions for disabling systemd-networkd-wait-online.service which restored my machine to normal boot: https://wiki.debian.org/systemd/howtos/WaitOnline
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 12
KDE Plasma Version: 5.26.90
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.103.0
Qt Version: 5.15.8
Kernel Version: 6.1.0-3-amd64 (64-bit)
...

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Re: How to make fstab work on Debian 10?

#9 Post by boldstripe »

The new card (Intel 8265) did not fix the issue. For me, the problem of fstab share mounting over WiFi alone was finally solved by two further changes, both necessary:
  • enabling 'Make available to other users' in the settings for the WiFi access point AND
  • adding `x-systemd.automount` to each fstab entry.
With both settings enabled, the machine connects to the network over WiFi during boot and automatically mounts the network shares in the fstab entries.

When set to 'available to all users', WiFi connects during boot, and before any individual user logs in, so the fstab entries process in time. Similarly, Ethernet is available to all users by default, so Ethernet always makes an early connection letting fstab connect and automount the Shares.

When WiFi is not made available to all users, and there is no alternative wired Ethernet, the machine does not connect to the network until an individual user (me) logs in--too late for the fstab entries to take effect.

So, all-user-WiFi, and the way it forces early connection, is definitely necessary, but the historic fstab entries still did not work with WiFi alone.

Again, the historic fstab entry I had used was:

Code: Select all

//192.168.1.220/backups/        /media/Backups  cifs    credentials=/home/myusername/.smb-freenas,uid=1000,iocharset=utf8,noperm 
For some reason, `x-systemd.automount` option is also necessary. Perhaps it adds some extra degree of waiting for the WiFi connection during boot, sufficient for the fstab entries to process successfully. Here is how I added that to the above:

Code: Select all

//192.168.1.220/backups/	/media/Backups	cifs	x-systemd.automount,credentials=/home/michael/.smb-freenas,uid=1000,iocharset=utf8,noperm	0	0
So, a little confusing (to me), but both changes were needed, at least using WiFi without Ethernet. I believe I am by now on the release version of Debian 11 Bullseye so I hope this can help other users in future.

Edit: I tried this with the 'noauto' option added to the fstab entry too, but it seemed to make no difference so I have omitted it for now.
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 12
KDE Plasma Version: 5.26.90
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.103.0
Qt Version: 5.15.8
Kernel Version: 6.1.0-3-amd64 (64-bit)
...

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