It has been noted that Macs running El Capitan will attempt to auto mount Xsan volume(s) on startup only once. If the volume(s) fail, unlike previous versions of OS X, the system will not re-attempt to auto mount any Xsan volumes.
It has also been noted that the Promise SanLink2 FC units, although faster and more stable, are slower at startup initialisation and LUN scanning also takes longer that say internal PCIe cards or first-generation SanLink units.
With the two above combinations, users are forced to manually mount the Xsan volume via a terminal command, or create a shell script with the terminal command inserted and placed in the user’s startup items folder. Terminal command is:
sudo xsanctl mount voluneName
(volumeName is the actual Xsan volume name that appears when mounted, can also work without sudo)
A set of scripts have been developed (and are attached to this article) which force the Xsan service (xsand) to delay auto mount until it appears to the system that LUN information has stopped changing.
To install the scripts, download the file to say your downloads folder.
Open a Terminal window and enter in:
sudo tar xvzpf ~/Downloads/xsandelay.tgz -C /
You will see output very similar to the below, you can ignore the errors:
x ./ x ./._Library x ./Library/: Can't set user=0/group=0 for Library x ./usr/: Can't set user=0/group=0 for usrCan't update time for usr x ./usr/local/ x ./usr/local/libexec/ x ./usr/local/libexec/xsandelay.py x ./Library/LaunchDaemons/ x ./Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.support.ht205706.xsandelay.plist tar: copyfile unpack (./Library) failed: Operation not permitted
Then we need to activate the script with:
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.support.ht205706.xsandelay.plist
Once this has been done, reboot the system, login, and wait 30-60 seconds. As the SanLink2 performs LUN scanning (as indicated by the amber LED), the Xsan auto mount will be delayed until the LUN information has stopped changing for a small amount of time, then the Xsan volume(s) should auto mount to the Desktop / Finder.
Download xsandelay.tgz
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