Auto mount and ignore errors

[Paul Schenkeveld]

On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 12:16:39PM -0500, Aaron Hurt wrote:
> Andrew Brampton wrote:
>> 2009/4/1 Andrei Kolu <antik at bsd.ee>:
>>   
>>> Andrew Brampton wrote:
>>>     
>>>> So my question is, is there a fstab option which will ignore a failed
>>>> mount, and if possible continue to boot? I've read the man page, and
>>>> did a bit of googling, but didn't find anything. Would there be any
>>>> objection to a patch which implemented a "ignerror" flag?
>>>> 
>>> Mount from /etc/rc.local?
>> 
>> You mean create my own script for the mounting? Sure that would work
>> but I don't see that as "clean" as placing it in fstab.
>> 
>> Andrew
>> 
> I think "clean" here is a bit misplaced.  It's not ever "clean" to ignore a 
> file system mount error.  If you're file system in question is prone to 
> mount failures it's probably not a good idea to mount it from fstab at all.

I use my notebook both in my home office and when visiting customers.
When in my office I like to mount some nfs filesystems that are not
available when I'm out.  Before 7.1 /etc/rc worked just the way I wanted
mounting these nfs filesystems when in my office and skipping them with
an error telling me that the name of the nfs server cannot be resolved
when visiting customers.

That old behaviour was clearly wrong as it would also continue booting
when really important filesystems cannot be mounted, e.g. due to network
problems.  However I'd like to argue that there are perfectly legal
cases for having filesystems in /etc/fstab that only get mounted when
available.

So I agree with OP that there should be a clean way of marking some
filesystems 'optional' or 'ignerror' in fstab.

My 2 cents.

Paul Schenkeveld