On Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) I always get an error something like this when I shut down:
CIFS VFS: server not responding
CIFS VFS: no response for cmd 50 mid 0
This started happening when I added a CIFS mount to our NAS box at home in /etc/fstab. Basically what is happening is that the wireless network interfaces (set up by NetworkManager in Gnome) are being shut down prior to the CIFS mount being unmounted, which causes a timeout trying to unmount… because there’s no network connection.
Turns out this is a very well-known issue, but won’t be fixed for Jaunty Jackalope (the next Ubuntu version). Read more here.
There are some proposed workarounds, some of which aren’t suitable in all cases (hence why the Ubuntu team haven’t got a fix for it yet):
- Do not use system-wide CIFS mounts but use Gnome VFS pseudomounts like typing smb://foo/bar in nautilus
- Define your network in /etc/network/interfaces rather than in NetworkManager
- Hacking the shutdown sequence to make it unmount network filesystems earlier (for example moving S31umountnfs.sh to S14umountnfs.sh in /etc/rc[06].d) : will fix it if you aren’t executing anything on those network filesystems
Method 2 and 3 require a little technical knowledge, and method 1 (pseudomounts) aren’t really suitable as they’re not permanent. Another solution not listed here is to add a kill script to the shutdown sequence that runs pretty much immediately to unmount the directory you want unmounted. Again though, that requires a little Linux knowledge.
So for those of you who aren’t Linux savvy, unfortunately there isn’t a simple solution out there yet. I haven’t got around to fixing it on my own laptop yet, but when I do, I’ll probably post a quick tutorial!
