Trying to push image to client - Mounting File System Fail

[PageTown]

I am trying to push an image to a client and the process get’s stuck at "Mounting File System…Failed " and then I see the repeated message “mount:mounting 10.1.8.10:/media/BFD_/images/ on /images failed: Connection timed out”. Any idea what could be causing this?

I am running Fog 1.2.0 on Ubuntu 12.04.!!

[Wayne Workman]

Try to restart the NFS service on the server and try again. If that doesn’t work, we can dig deeper. https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Troubleshoot_NFS

[PageTown]

@Wayne-Workman

I restarted the NFS service, it didn’t give me any errors, but now I am seeing this message:

[Sebastian Roth]

Have you followed the whole troubleshooting guide yet?? See the link Wayne posted and let us know if you get any errors (take pictures) along the way.

[PageTown]

@Sebastian-Roth I have been trying to work through the “Using a Fog debug deployment for testing (easy & quick way)” section of the NFS trouble shooting guide and I need some clarification on a few of the initial steps.

It says to select the problematic client from my Hosts list in the web UI, choose Basic Tasks, Download and Create a debug task. The screen shot in the article doesn’t look like my UI, I have no option to schedule task as a debug task AND Schedule Instant Deployment on that screen. I did go into Hosts -> Advanced -> Debug and created a debug task. I assume this is the same thing? Do I need to schedule a Download task also?

So I started up my Host and got this, I assume this is the command prompt mentioned in the article immediately after the section on creating the debug task?

The next part says to create two directories to mount to: mkdir /images and mkdir /images/dev . I already have both of those directories on my Fog server though, so am I creating these again?

[Wayne Workman]

@PageTown Yes, you’d create the directories locally in the debug session, then mount those directories to the corresponding shared NFS directories on the fog server.

[PageTown]

@Wayne-Workman Doing that won’t overwrite my pre-exisiting directories? I don’t want to lose the images I already have stored there.

[Wayne Workman]

@PageTown Mounting won’t. If you delete the directory while it’s mounted, it will. Don’t delete it. Unmount it.

so, mounting is mount x.x.x.x:\blah
unmounting is umount blah

Or, after your done with testing, just turn the system off.

NFS is Linux-native file sharing, and mounting is just connecting to the share. This is how it’s done in Linux. That goes for SMB, too.

[PageTown]

@Wayne-Workman So I am unmounting my current directory, which is /media/BFD_/images and mounting these test directories to the same place?

[Wayne Workman]

@PageTown said in Trying to push image to client - Mounting File System Fail:

my current directory, which is /media/BFD_/images

There’s your problem.

You need to update your /etc/exports file on your FOG server to reflect the actual location of your images and dev directories. Then restart NFS.

Sorry I didn’t see it sooner.

also - make sure you have the .mntcheck files in both /media/BFD_/images and /media/BFD_/images/dev and that permissions on /media/BFD_/images is 777 recursive.

[PageTown]

@Wayne-Workman

My etc/exports file is already configured for that location.

[Wayne Workman]

@PageTown That’s good. Check for the .mntcheck files.

If they are there, you can proceed with the NFS testing, the results will give us a direction to go.

[PageTown]

@Wayne-Workman

I think something else may be wrong. When I went to my /images folder at media/BFD_/images to check for the mtn files, nothing is in it besides the text file I created in the first step of the troubleshooting guide. I had three images before, and it shows that I have three images in the UI. Shouldn’t I be seeing my images in that folder? And the /dev folder isn’t there either. Are they hidden or something?

[Wayne Workman]

@PageTown They are hidden. In Linux, files and folders that begin with a period are hidden. Use CLI, and issue the command ls -lahRt /media/BFD_/images

[PageTown]

@Wayne-Workman Here’s what I am seeing when I run that command:

[Wayne Workman]

@PageTown You’re missing the .mntcheck files.

Here’s the command to make them, and to set permissions afterwards:
touch /media/BFD_/images/.mntcheck
touch /media/BFD_/images/dev/.mntcheck
chmod -R 777 /media/BFD_/images

[PageTown]

@Wayne-Workman

It wouldn’t take ‘touch /media/BFD_/images/dev/.mntcheck’. It said that the location didn’t exist which makes me think that something has happened to all my images.

I have decided to wipe my server and start from scratch. Thanks for the help.

[Wayne Workman]

@PageTown That’s because the /dev directory doesn’t exist, from the below output. You could just make the directory with mkdir /media/BFD_/images/dev

[PageTown]

I did a HDD wipe and re-install of Ubuntu 12.04 and Fog 1.2.0. I was able to upload an image without any issues, but when I try to push that image to a machine I am still getting hung up on the Mounting thing.

Before I start the troubleshooting process again, I wanted to mention that I am running Fog over a Server 2012 network. Fog is not handling the DHCP. On the server I have 066 Boot Server Host Name & 067 Bootfile Name configured to allow undionly.kpxe and Fog to boot over the network. Could something in the server setup be causing this issue?

[Sebastian Roth]

@PageTown said:

I was able to upload an image without any issues, but when I try to push that image to a machine I am still getting hung up on the Mounting thing.

That sounds really strange. Why would it upload (to NFS) but not download from it? Again, show us the output you get from ls -lahRt /media/BFD_/images! As well please show us the full output of mount (I am wondering what filesystem that external drive is formated with).

Could something in the server setup be causing this issue?

No I don’t think so. NFS has nothing to do with PXE boot or DHCP in general.

Changing the default image paths is not as easy as it might seem on first sight. I count it to the more advanced things to adjust on your FOG server and I would only recommend it to people having played with FOG and linux a fair bit. That said I am wondering if you are aware of the possibility to mount external devices to pretty much any directory within your filesystem. Doesn’t have to be /media/XXX. So if you ever consider to setup things from scratch again you might want to simply mount your external disk to /images before installing FOG.