rmtab(5nfs) rmtab(5nfs)
Name
rmtab - table of local file systems mounted by remote NFS clients
Description
The file resides in the directory and contains a list of all remote hosts that have mounted local file systems using the NFS protocols.
Whenever a client performs a remote mount, the server machine's mount daemon makes an entry in the server machine's file. The command
instructs the server's mount daemon to remove the entry. The -b command broadcasts to all servers and informs them that they should remove
all entries from created by the sender of the broadcast message. By placing a -b command in tables on NFS servers can be purged of entries
made by a crashed client, who, upon rebooting, did not remount the same file systems that it had before the system crashed. The file is a
series of lines of the form:
hostname:directory
Rather than rewrite the rmtab file on each request, the mount daemon comments out unmounted entries by placing a number sign (#) in the
first character position of the appropriate line. The mount daemon rewrites the entire file, without commented out entries, no more fre-
quently than every 30 minutes. The frequency depends on the occurrence of requests.
This table is used only to preserve information between crashes and is read only by when it starts up. The daemon keeps an in-core table,
which it uses to handle requests from programs like and
Restrictions
Although the table is close to the truth, it may contain erroneous information if NFS client machines fail to execute -a when they reboot.
Files
See Also
mount(8nfs), umount(8nfs), mountd(8nfs), showmount(8nfs), shutdown(8)
rmtab(5nfs)