How do I run a command on start up?

[chrisod]

Ever since I upgraded to 9.04 my NAT drive does not mount on boot, and if I don't remember to mount the drive before opening Rhythmbox it dumps the music dB and I have to wait 5 minutes for it rescan my music drive after I mount it again.

Fstab is fine as sudo mount -a mounts everything normally. I don't know why it's not mounting but I'm fine with a workaround if I can find one.

How can I automate a sudo - mount -a command on every startup?

[kerry_s]

post your fstab.

for now you can put " mount -a &" in /etc/rc.local it runs as root already so no need sudo.

[chrisod]

My fstab...(the NAT drive has a static IP of 192.168.11.7) None of the NAT drive mounts are mounting at boot.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#  -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config --
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sda5 :
UUID=54bed292-dd3b-451d-b414-c4e8a70dc7b5 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro,relatime 0 1
# Entry for /dev/sda6 :
UUID=579b6ae8-6bc8-495b-8006-6b896c4c8abb none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sda7 /home ext3 nodev,nosuid,relatime 0 2
192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/Music /mnt/music nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr 0 0
192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/Photos /mnt/photos nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr 0 0
192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/backups /mnt/backups nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr 0 0
192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/NetFolder /mnt/NetFolder nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr 0 0

[kerry_s]

what i think is happening is the mount is run before your network is up.
check your /var/log/messages for errors.

did the "mount -a &" work in /etc/rc.local ?

[click4851]

what is the perferred way to add a mount point, other than during installation?

[MrWES]

My fstab...(the NAT drive has a static IP of 192.168.11.7) None of the NAT drive mounts are mounting at boot.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#  -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config --
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sda5 :
UUID=54bed292-dd3b-451d-b414-c4e8a70dc7b5 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro,relatime 0 1
# Entry for /dev/sda6 :
UUID=579b6ae8-6bc8-495b-8006-6b896c4c8abb none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sda7 /home ext3 nodev,nosuid,relatime 0 2
192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/Music /mnt/music nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr 0 0
192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/Photos /mnt/photos nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr 0 0
192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/backups /mnt/backups nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr 0 0
192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/NetFolder /mnt/NetFolder nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr 0 0

Shouldn't that be //192.168.11.7:/blah/blah....

[chrisod]

did the "mount -a &" work in /etc/rc.local ?

Nope - NAT drive did not mount on a reboot. Upon investigation it seems as though rc.local is never running due to a DNS error during boot when it can't find 192.168.11.7. So the problem does seem to be that it is trying to mount the drive before the network is up.

My first thought about a fix was to just comment out the mount commands from fstab and mount in the rc.local script. That isn't working because I'm still getting a mount.nfs DNS resolution error on 192.168.11.7 on boot, so the rc.local script never runs. I can start the rc.local script manually so I know the script is good, if I can just get it to run. I don't know why my laptop is trying to mount 192.168.11.7 when all 4 mount commands are commented out of fstab. Where else would be picking up the NAT drive from?

Any ideas?

[chrisod]

OK, I understand what is going on...and I have a workaround. With Intepid and Jaunty, the network connection is not established until you log in. It has something to do with how Network Manager works. If you have a desktop or laptop that isn't particularly mobile, you can simply configure the network the old fashioned way in /etc/network/interfaces and you should be ok. I'm mobile, so that would be a PITA for me. I took the mount commands out of fstab, added them to rc.local, and put a sleep 180 at the top of rc.local to give the network time to come up after login. It works fine as long as I log in immediately, which I usually do. It's not a perfect solution but good enough for now.

[kerry_s]

OK, I understand what is going on...and I have a workaround. With Intepid and Jaunty, the network connection is not established until you log in. It has something to do with how Network Manager works. If you have a desktop or laptop that isn't particularly mobile, you can simply configure the network the old fashioned way in /etc/network/interfaces and you should be ok. I'm mobile, so that would be a PITA for me. I took the mount commands out of fstab, added them to rc.local, and put a sleep 180 at the top of rc.local to give the network time to come up after login. It works fine as long as I log in immediately, which I usually do. It's not a perfect solution but good enough for now.

i would just script it than, remove everything from rc.local and deal with it on the user end.

example:
make sure you have pmount> sudo apt-get install pmount
pmount mounts as the user so you shouldn't have permission problems

mkdir ~/bin
gedit ~/bin/connect

#!/bin/sh
if [ -d "192.168.11.7:/shares" ] ; then
 pmount 192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/Music
 pmount 192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/Photos
 pmount 192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/backups
 pmount 192.168.11.7:/shares/SimplePool/NetFolder
else
 exit 0
fi

chmod +x ~/bin/connect

(might need to add sleep to that if the connections slow connecting)

then just add> connect to your session startup

not sure if that's correct but i would go that route. work it out on the user end. just my thought.

[chrisod]

Thanks. I'll try the script and report back if it works.