/etc/fstab entry does not mount iSCSI device on boot up.

This document (7004427) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10

Situation

Set up the iSCSI initiator following the SLES11 "Storage Administration Guide"

Resolution

Modify /etc/fstab to use 'hotplug' (for SLES10) or 'nofail' (for SLES11) option.

Example for SLES 11:
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/mountpoint ext3 acl,user,nofail 0 0

If you are using LVM and iscsi and having problems where the device is not available on bootup please do either of the following.

Option A (Recommended).
In the /lib/udev/rules.d/64-lvm2.rules file
Add the line
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="sd*", GOTO="lvm_work"
Change the /etc/fstab file to use
/dev/mapper/vgname-lvname
instead of
/dev/vgname/lvname

Option B.
Create /etc/init.d/after.local with the following information. This will reload the the lvm configuration and mount entries from the /etc/fstab file.
# ll /etc/init.d/after.local
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 135 2010-08-02 09:33 /etc/init.d/after.local

# cat /etc/init.d/after.local
#!/bin/bash
/etc/init.d/boot.lvm reload
mount -a

Option C.
Mount by the /dev/disk/by-uuid instead of the /dev/vgname/lvname in the /etc/fstab.

Additional Information

Multipathed iSCSI devices

Multipathed iSCSI devices can be addressed using the reboot persistent device names in /dev/disk/by-id/. However, to have the device auto mount after a system reboot, the following conditions must met (tested on SLES11SP1, patch level as of July 2012):

Use the nofail option in /etc/fstab
Make sure the dump field is set to 0 (zero) else the system will stop booting and prompt for the maintenance mode as the device is not available at this time in the boot process.
The dump option is the fifth entry option in /etc/fstab, see man 5 fstab for more information.
Make sure /etc/init.d/multipathd and /etc/init.d/open-iscsi are started automatically in the desired system runlevel
When using an alias name instead of the LUN wwid, please use the corresponding entry in /dev/disk/by-id/ and not /dev/mapper/

The iSCSI LUN used in this example is defined as follows:

iscsiclient:~ # multipath -ll
yellow (1494554000000000036363500000000000000000000000000) dm-0 IET,VIRTUAL-DISK
size=500M features='0' hwhandler='0' wp=rw
|-+- policy='round-robin 0' prio=1 status=active
| `- 5:0:0:0 sdc 8:32 active ready running
`-+- policy='round-robin 0' prio=1 status=enabled
`- 6:0:0:0 sdb 8:16 active ready running
iscsiclient:~ #

As the device contains a partition table, its addressed using scsi-yellow-part1:

iscsiclient:~ # ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 260 2012-07-31 10:56 ./
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 100 2012-07-31 10:56 ../
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-07-31 10:56 dm-name-yellow -> ../../dm-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-07-31 10:56 dm-name-yellow_part1 -> ../../dm-1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-07-31 10:56 dm-uuid-mpath-1494554000000000036363500000000000000000000000000 -> ../../dm-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-07-31 10:56 dm-uuid-part1-mpath-1494554000000000036363500000000000000000000000000 -> ../../dm-1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2012-07-31 10:56 edd-int13_dev80 -> ../../sda
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-07-31 10:56 edd-int13_dev80-part1 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-07-31 10:56 edd-int13_dev80-part2 -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-07-31 10:56 scsi-1494554000000000036363500000000000000000000000000 -> ../../dm-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-07-31 10:56 scsi-1494554000000000036363500000000000000000000000000-part1 -> ../../dm-1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-07-31 10:56 scsi-yellow -> ../../dm-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2012-07-31 10:56 scsi-yellow-part1 -> ../../dm-1
iscsiclient:~ #

Example of an /etc/fstab entry for a multipathed iSCSI device:

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-yellow-part1 /iscsi ext3 acl,user_xattr,nofail 0 2

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