Ubuntu – Mount from rc.local fails; how to do it properly

bootcifscommand linemountsamba

Here is my current /etc/rc.local:

#!/bin/sh -e

# Test 1
echo line1 > /home/myHome/rclog.txt

# the mount
mount /mnt/mediaDrive &> /home/myHome/mountlog.txt

# Test 2
echo line2 >> /home/myHome/rclog.txt

exit 0

The /mnt/mediaDrive is a noauto in fstab. It is a network share, hence the mount in rc.local.

The mount in the above script does not work at boot. After boot, the rclog.txt file contains both line1 and line2, and the mountlog.txt file is empty. This would indicate that all commands in the script were run successfully, however, the drive is not mounted.

Running sudo /etc/rc.local manually in a terminal does mount the network share.

There is nothing relevant in /var/syslog that I can see, and permissions for rc.local are 755. The relevant fstab entry:

//192.168.1.100/home  /mnt/mediaDrive  cifs  noauto,credentials=/home/myHome/.mediaCredentials,uid=myName,gid=myGroup  0  0

What's going on here?

Best Answer

The problem must be that at boot time your network isn't available yet, and it's the reason why it mounts after boot. You must use another mechanisms to mount the device, like upstart. Example using upstart:

# mount CIFS share

start on (local-filesystems and net-device-up IFACE!=lo)
stop on runlevel [!2345]

pre-start script /bin/mount /mnt/mediaDrive
pre-stop script /bin/umount /mnt/mediaDrive

You can modify it to suit your needs. The file name must end with .conf and saved in the /etc/init directory.

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