Enabled nfs service fails to start

Question

I have attempted to install nfs on my Pi3 running Raspbian

I have installed:-

sudo apt-get install rpcbind nfs-kernel-server

Added to /etc/exports

/var/www    *(rw,fsid=0,sync)
/home   *(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)

Run sudo exportfs

I have enabled:-

sudo systemctl enable rpcbind.service
sudo systemctl enable nfs-kernel-server

I can mount on a Ubuntu machine with:-

sudo mount -v -o noatime -t nfs 10.1.1.41:/home/pi ~/test

Unfortunately when I reboot Raspbian the nfs-kernel-server.service does not start.

systemctl status nfs-kernel-server.service
● nfs-kernel-server.service - LSB: Kernel NFS server support
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server)
   Active: active (exited) since Tue 2017-03-07 23:09:48 AEDT; 1 day 14h ago
  Process: 527 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

and I need to manually restart with:-

sudo systemctl restart nfs-kernel-server.service

I have seen a few reports of similar problems by others, but none with solutions.

Answer 1

This is a known problem in Debian and not even specific to the Pi. The problem goes way back to the time when Debian changed from the init system to systemd. The dependencies between nfs-kernel-server and rpcbind are not correctly defined. Debian/Raspbian still runs the old init.d scripts. The simpliest way out for me was to insert a

start)
sleep 30   # this line is to be inserted!
export_files="/etc/export"

in /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server. It was in line #63 on my system. The hint came from https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/nfs-kernel-server-wont-start-on-boot/5936/7. I had the problem on a Beagleboneblack and the sleep statement solved it for me.

Answer 2

To cleanup this old post.

The Jessie systemd service had a known bug, but this is now fixed.

The only thing you have to do under Stretch is install nfs-kernel-server - this now seems to have a proper systemd service, and rpcbind is now included by default.