Sorry for the lateness of this summary (I just got back from vacation),
but at least it's better than no summary. :)
> Date: Tue, 19 Oct 93 15:12:24 PDT
>
> The scenario:
>
> In preparation for some subnetting of our network, I've been trying
> to get some of our dataless workstations to be clients of a Sparc10
> rather than our central 690MP fileserver.
>
> The Sparc10 contains the necessary /export directories, and has
> them exported.
>
> On the client, I changed the entries in /etc/fstab to reference
> the Sparc10 rather than the 690MP, and I added the entry for the
> Sparc10 in the local /etc/hosts.
>
>
> The problem:
>
> When the client boots, and gets to the "mount -vat nfs" line in
> rc.local, the following message appears:
>
> mount: <server>:/export/exec/sun4.sunos.4.1.3: Too many levels of remote in path
>
> at which point I get the infamous
>
> WARNING - file systems have NOT been remounted read-write.
> Use fsck to fix any file system problems, rebooting the
> system if any problems are found with a mounted file system.
> After file systems have fsck'ed cleanly, you can remount file
> systems and finish single-user setup using "/etc/rc.single".
>
> and the machine is left in single user mode.
>
> I've checked the documentation, as well as SunSolve 2.0, and the
> "Too many levels of remote in path" is an exportfs error, not a
> mount error.
The Sparc10 is a standalone workstation, so /usr, /export, etc. are all
mounted from local disks, ie. they are *not* NFS mounted from another
workstation. As I said in the original message, I could export these file
systems with no problems or error messagesm, so obviously I wasn't
trying to export nfs mounted filesystems.
I received almost 2 dozen replies to my original message, almost all
of which told me that you are not allowed to export a filesystem that
is NFS mounted from another workstation. I knew this wasn't the problem.
A few people told me to check /etc/bootparams, etc., but I'm working
with a dataless client, not a diskless client, so bootparams is not
necessary.
The real problem was a typo in the local /etc/hosts file on the dataless
client! I had the wrong IP number listed for the server (off by one).
So, while the hostname of the server was correct, the IP number wasn't.
The client was in fact trying to mount from another client, which of
course, had the /usr partition nfs mounted, resulting in the "too many
levels of remote in path error".
Unfortunately no gold stars for anyone, as I stumbled across the answer
to this myself when double-checking things that I took for granted.
*sigh* Sorry for the wasted bandwidth.
Several people did offer new insights, though:
>> Also, you say '"Too many levels of remote in path" is an exportfs error, not
>> a mount error.' But if you run strings on /etc/mount, it shows "Too many
>> levels of remote in path" (I don't have source, so I can only 'strings' it.)
You're right! I stand corrected. Thanks!
ljm@dlogics.com (Lewis Muhlenkamp)
>> If you do, though then NFS mount /usr in place of
>> /export/exec/sun4.sunos.4.1.3 (I've had to do it both ways. Once I even
>> had to have both exported and mounted to get it to work properly. It was
>> weird).
Interesting suggestion. Anyone know why this would be the case?
Anyway, thanks to everyone who responded, trying to help.
Much appreciated!
worsham@aer.com (Robert D. Worsham)
blymn@mulga.awadi.com.AU (Brett Lymn)
green@Kodak.COM (Russell Green)
lindy@olsen.ch (Lindy Foster)
Badri.Pillai@ecrc.de (Badri Pillai)
odinba!odin!jeff@uunet.UU.NET (Jeff Tate)
ballisti@ifh.ee.ethz.ch (Raymond Ballisti)
dlogics!ljm@uunet.UU.NET (Lewis Muhlenkamp)
stern@sunne.East.Sun.COM (Hal Stern)
kwthomas@nsslsun.nssl.uoknor.edu (Kevin W. Thomas)
frederic_piard@kangourou.erli.gsi.fr (Frederic Piard)
fetrow@biostat.washington.edu (Dave Fetrow)
oliver@ast.saic.com (Thomas W Oliver)
gpr@proteon.com (Gary Richardson)
poffen@San-Jose.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger)
jhendric@spock.resd.honeywell.com (Jim Hendrickson)
glenn@uniq.com.au (Glenn Satchell)
djiracek@jupiter.fnbc.com (Dan Jiracek)
johnson@spectra.com (Boyd Johnson)
fallan@baobab.awadi.com.AU (Frank Allan)
osicki@hasler.ascom.ch (Chris Osicki)
---- Mike van der Velden email: mvanderv@glenayre.com Glenayre Electronics, Ltd. phone: 604-293-1611, x243 Vancouver, BC. V5K 5B8 fax: 604-293-4317
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:08:28 CDT