InterBase Interaction with NFS Automount

The way automount works is it adds entries into the /etc/mtab file. When a client attaches to a database, InterBase looks at /etc/mtab to see which filesystem the database resides on. This determines whether the server will go remote or local.

As the automounter daemon detects someone poking around the mtab entry, it forces the filesystems to mount, regardless if we need to look at that directory or not. If the resulting /etc/mtab contains hundreds of lines in there, the amount of time to do all the unnecessary mounts is great. This can cause timeouts, and the software concludes that the requested database doesn't exist.

You should run automounter with the automount options /net -host -soft, to prevent automounter from making entries into /etc/mtab. You shouldn't automount /usr/interbase or the filesystem on which the database resides. You should hard- mount those filesystems.

Do not configure a given filesystem for both hard-mounting and automounting, this will result in operating system conflicts.