From: Bernd Schubert <bernd-schubert@web.de>
Subject: Re: client apps not surviving nfsd restart
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 15:25:31 +0200
Sender: nfs-admin@lists.sourceforge.net
Message-ID: <200408201525.36681.bernd-schubert@web.de>
References: <4125EA9F.3040304@bio.ifi.lmu.de>
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Hello Frank,


> 1) After installing SusE 9.0, the default was set to nfs-over-tcp. I didn=
't
>     know that, but suddenly after every server reboot I had at least 4-5
>     of the work station users complaining about stale NFS handles, e.g.,
>     /usr was stale and so java didn't start anymore etc. It's not really
>     reproducable by some certain sequence of starting apps and rebooting
>     the server etc., but it happens every time the server has to reboot
>     with a few clients.

can you confirm this with vanilla client/server kernel version? We have 45=
=20
diskless clients here and each of them has no problem on a server reboot.=20
This works for more than two years with vanilla 2.4.X kernel versions. Sinc=
e=20
about 4-5 month we also use nfs-over-tcp and this also has no negative=20
effect.
We also tried using 2.6.7 on our server, but it always crashed every mornin=
g=20
with page allocation errors, so we had to give up with this version and=20
switched back to 2.4.X. However, although the server was rebooted every=20
morning (and/or the failover server took over), this caused no problems for=
=20
the clients (except for the directories mounted from ClusterNFS, but thats =
a=20
different more complicated CNFSD related story).

>
>     In the NFS howto I read that the disadvantage of nfs-over-tcp is that
>     "If your server crashes in the middle of a packet transmission, the
>      client will hang and any shares will need to be unmounted and
> remounted."

This howto seems to be slightly outdated.

>
>     But I thought a clean reboot with a clean stop and later start of the
>     nfsserver shouldn't make a problem.

It doesn't make a problems with vanilla kernel version.

[snip]

>
> 2) We are currently testing kernel 2.6.8.1. The nfs behaviour seems
>     to have changed in some ways. Running e.g. "find /" on a diskless
>     client with kernel 2.4 would just hang when the server rebootet
>     and later go on when the server was back.
>     With 2.6.8.1, the find command will immediately abort and report
>     some stale nfs handles.

We only tested 2.6.7 and it caused no such problems, as we have failover, I=
=20
tested failover during file transfers and this worked like a charm.


Cheers,
	Bernd

PS: About 1.5 years ago we were forced to use a Suse kernel on our server (=
due=20
to a closed-sources binary only kernel module) and this kernel caused a lot=
=20
of nfs related trouble for us. As the module also didn't work properly we=20
finally decided not to buy this software ;)


=2D-=20
Bernd Schubert
Physikalisch Chemisches Institut / Theoretische Chemie
Universit=E4t Heidelberg
INF 229
69120 Heidelberg
e-mail: bernd.schubert@pci.uni-heidelberg.de

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