[PLUG] Stupid NFS question - Progress!

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 23 Dec 2013 16:23:06 -0800
Chris Schafer <xophere at gmail.com> dijo:

>Also I would re-enter the configuration line in the exports file.
>Perhaps with the same entry as the one that worked.
>
>Is jjj mounted by hand?  Or is it mounted by the media mount service
>that ubuntu is running?
>
>Maybe the interaction is with the service that mounts the removable
>media and the nfs export?
>
>I am not sure I have ever exported a non permeant mount.  Perhaps
>moving the export up higher would fix it?  Though I don't see why that
>should be a problem.

When I installed Xubuntu 13.10 on the brand new laptop (only a couple
weeks ago) I made a separate partition for ~/. I did the same thing
when I installed Xubuntu 12.04 on the desktop several months ago. When
either computer is rebooted the boot process automatically mounts ~/
because it has to, else it wouldn't be able to find all the
configuration files. 

However, Movies is an external USB drive on the laptop that I must mount
manually after booting the laptop. I could do it from the command line,
but it's far easier to use the Xfce panel widget "Places." I just click
on Places, it displays Movies in gray, I select Movies and a popup
appears offering to just mount it or mount and open it (I.e., open a
Thunar browser window. I always select just mount, after which it goes
from gray to black in the GUI and I can browse it. I don't know what
process Xubuntu uses to mount it; ultimately I suppose there is a mount
command hidden under the GUI. And since it is a USB drive Ubuntu mounts
it in /media/<username>/ by default.

I suppose I could add a line to fstab on the laptop so it would mount
Movies automatically, but then there would be at least an error message
if I ever boot the laptop away from home without the drive physically
connected to the laptop. 

So when I try to mount Movies on the desktop via nfs I am actually
trying to mount a mount. Could that be the source of the problem?

As for the syntax in /etc/exports, I can't see anything wrong with
it. When just a bit ago I added ~/ to the exports file I did so by
copying the existing Movies line, then backspacing over the mount point
until it read just /home/jjj. And I failed to copy the line completely
the first time - left off a final parenthesis - and got an error
message when I went to exportfs -a. I don't know how rigorously
exportfs checks the syntax of the share lines, but it must do at least
some checking.