Debian Squeeze stable: ifstate file does not contain the network interface (related to failing NFS mount at boot)

Question

The automatic NFS mount at boot doesn't work. This is my fstab row:

nas:/backups     /mnt/nas_backups      nfs     rw,_netdev,auto    0       0

Using mount -a it works, but at boot it doesn't work. After some investigations, I think the problem lies in /etc/network/run/ifstate: I say this because /etc/init.d/mountnfs.sh calls /etc/network/if-up.d/mountnfs, which contains this code:

exit_unless_last_interface() {
    grep "^[:space:]*auto" /etc/network/interfaces  | \
   sed -e 's/[ \t]*auto[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//;s/[ \t]/\n/g' | \
   while read i; do
   if [ `grep -c $i /etc/network/run/ifstate` -eq "0" ]; then
       msg="if-up.d/mountnfs[$IFACE]: waiting for interface $i before doing NFS mounts"
       log_warning_msg "$msg"
       # Can not pass this as a variable because of the while subshell
       mkdir /var/run/network/mountnfs_earlyexit 2> /dev/null
   fi
    done
    if [ -d /var/run/network/mountnfs_earlyexit ]; then
   rmdir /var/run/network/mountnfs_earlyexit 2>/dev/null
   exit 0
    fi
}

This code makes the script exit, because in /etc/network/run/ifstate there is not the eth0 interface (its only content is lo=lo), although eth0 interface is up and running.

Do you have some suggestions about the causes ifstate is not correct, and how to resolve this?

UPDATE 1: This is the configuration of eth0 (an user said it could take a part in the problem, so I write it):

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
#allow-hotplug eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp
 # The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
         address 10.0.0.11
         netmask 255.255.255.0
         post-up iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.up.rules
         gateway 10.0.0.1

UPDATE 2: This is the output of /etc/init.d/networking restart:

Running /etc/init.d/networking restart is deprecated because it may not enable again some interfaces ... (warning).
Reconfiguring network interfaces...SIOCADDRT: File exists
Failed to bring up eth0.
done.

After the restart eth0 works correctly, and /etc/network/run/ifstate still doesn't contain eth0.

Answer 1

It was a problem of missing firmware: the network card (a NetXen NX3031) works without installing his proprietary firmware, but works better with it (firmware-netxen package inside non-free repos).

Once installed, at the reboot the network devices has been mounted correctly. Thank you a lot!

Answer 2

Maybe adding the "bg" option into your fstab mount line might get around this?

If the bg option is specified, a timeout or failure causes the mount(8) command to fork a >child which continues to attempt to mount the export. The parent immediately returns with a >zero exit code. This is known as a "background" mount.