I have a strange NFS problem and I'm wondering if anyone can shed any
light. I have some Linux boxes which need to mount some volumes from a
Netware server via NFS. The appropriate bit of Novell software has been
installed and configured, and the Linux box can mount the volumes.
However, I get errors like this when I do an 'ls' in a particular
directory:
ls: /mnt/netware/CONTRACT/MDAVIS/A700.TST: No such file or directory
I get maybe about 20 of these errors, in a directory which has about
2500 files. Investigation reveals that in each case, there is a
corresponding file whose name is all lower case e.g.
/mnt/netware/CONTRACT/MDAVIS/a700.tst
What appears to happen is that ls does an opendir, then repeated readdir
calls which get it a list of filenames. Then it does a stat call for
each filename to get details.
=46or some reason, for some of the files, it is getting wrong case on the
filename. I was quite convinced that this was a server issue, but now
I'm not so sure, because I see subtly different behaviour with different
NFS clients. The operational clients are RH9 boxes with 2.4.20 as
supplied with RH9. I also tried an OS-X Panther box (to have a NFS
different client stack) and it gave me similar errors, but with a
slightly different set of files. And then oddest of all - I tried with
SuSE 9.0 box which had 2.4.21 as supplied with SuSE and got no errors.
SuSE displayed VERY odd behaviour - for some files whose names were in
upper case, it would return the same information (including inode
number) for a stat on the filename in either upper OR lower case.
I then tried installing a kernel.org 2.4.24 on the RH9 box but this gave
the exact same results as 2.4.20.
So, this odd behaviour gives rise to a number of questions
1) What the hell is going on ? :-)
2) Is it really a server or client issue ?
3) What's happening with the SuSE box ?
4) Why does ls do the stat call at all ? Indeed, if I do=20
ls -1 /mnt/netware/CONTRACT/MDAVIS > /dev/null I don't see the error at
all, showing that ls doesn't do the stat if stdout is not a tty - but I
don't see why it bothers when stdout IS in fact a tty, but ls has not
been given the -l option (or any other which might require a stat)
Niall
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>I have a strange NFS problem and I'm wondering if anyone can shed any
>light. I have some Linux boxes which need to mount some volumes from
>a Netware server via NFS. The appropriate bit of Novell software has
>been installed and configured, and the Linux box can mount the
>volumes. However, I get errors like this when I do an 'ls' in a
>particular directory:
>
>ls: /mnt/netware/CONTRACT/MDAVIS/A700.TST: No such file or directory
Which Netware version are you using? Netware has several different NFS
implementations. Each of them has different problems. It also matters if
you are using NSS or traditional volumes.
You could try a search on http://support.novell.com/search/kb_index.jsp.
Another option is to use Ethereal to watch what the server is actually
sending.
(Btw, one problem with Netware is that the volumes uses case-insensitive
file names, but the mount daemon still requires the correct case. Wouldn't
it make sense for the mount daemon to accept any case? Are there any other
NFS implementations that works like this? OS X, for example, also has a
case insensitive fs, I'm told.)
--
Peter ?strand http://www.thinlinc.com
Cendio http://www.cendio.se
Teknikringen 3 Phone: +46-13-21 46 00
583 30 Link?ping
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