Chapter 21. Compiler and Tools

The fcoe init scripts cannot determine what devices can be assigned through the FCoE storage fabric, and therefore whether the startup process needs to wait for device discovery. Consequently, logical volume (LVM2) detection on FCoE attached storage and mounting of file systems specified in /etc/fstab on FCoE storage can fail during system startup due to an incomplete FCoE device discovery.

To work around this problem, use /dev/disk/by-path/fc-* symbolic links as the specified block special device in /etc/fstab along with the _netdev mount option. The fcoe init script waits longer for the specified devices to attach.

Sometimes, Fibre Channel by-path symbolic links are not a suitable option, such as when using LVM2 or mounting by labels. You can, starting with version 1.0.28 of the fcoe-utils packages, use the MINIMUM_WAIT option in the /etc/fcoe/config file in such cases.

The default value of MINIMUM_WAIT is 0. Set the value to the number of seconds you want the fcoe init script to delay allowing device discovery to complete. Using MINIMUM_WAIT adds time to the system boot process, but could be necessary to allow block devices to be present before LVM2 and file system mounting scripts are run. (BZ#980961)