Why doesn't my EFS file system automatically mount when rebooting my EC2 instance?

Last updated: 2022-06-22

Amazon EFS auto mounts on reboot using the Amazon EFS mount helper or the Linux NFS client. Auto mounting might fail for the following reasons:

• The Amazon EFS mount helper isn't installed.
• The Linux NFS client isn't installed.
• The _netdev option isn't included in the EFS mount entry in /etc/fstab.

The Amazon EFS mount helper is a part of amazon-efs-utils. This package is available for installation on Amazon Linux and Amazon Linux 2 AMIs.

Check if the amazon-efs-utils package is installed on the instance:

If the package isn't installed, then run the following command to install it Amazon Linux and Amazon Linux 2 AMIs:

For more information, see Installing the Amazon EFS client on Amazon Linux and Amazon Linux 2.

To install amazon-efs-utils on other Linux distributions, see Installing the Amazon EFS client on other Linux distributions.

Verify that the Linux NFS client is installed on the instance.

Note: Use the Linux NFS client only when encryption or access points aren't used.

If the package isn't installed, then run the following commands to install it:

Amazon Linux 1, Amazon Linux 2, RHEL

Ubuntu

Run one of the following commands to start the service:

-or-

For more information see, Installing the NFS client.

The automount could fail if _netdev option isn't used in the EFS mount entry in /etc/fstab. The _netdev option prevents the operating system from mounting EFS until the network is enabled as EFS required network access.