Problems with lofs on Sun-3/4, SunOS 4.0, 4.0.1
Per Westerlund
perw at holtec.se
Thu Feb 23 06:23:49 AEST 1989
Short recapitulation of the problem: Paraphrased, loop-back filesystems
(lofs(4)) are for directories what symbolic links are for files. But, I
did not succeed in mounting filesystems of type lofs from the /etc/rc
script, which always worked from a shell.
The solution: The variable PATH is not exported in /etc/rc, add "export
PATH" and mounting lofs-type filesystems works. (Aside: Why is PATH not
exported? Will I break something when I export it, due to some very
subtle interaction?)
The explanation of the solution:
Whenever /usr/etc/mount encounters a file system type that it does not
recognize, it tries to execute a program called '"mount_%s", <file system
type>', in this case mount_lo. (This is not documented, I got a
suggestion this was the case by Greg Earle, <earle at sun.com>. Thanks,
Greg.) There is a program /usr/etc/mount_lo, but /usr/etc/mount did not
find it, since it had the default PATH in the environment. If /etc/rc
exports its PATH, which contains /usr/etc, /usr/etc/mount will find
mount_lo.
Per Westerlund
Holistic Technology AB
Grona Gatan 59
Gothenburg
SWEDEN
+46 31 420370
perw at holtec.se
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