NFS problem

[Anthony Walls]

I have two HP-UX 11.xx servers mounting a linux nas device with NFS. The remote dir is dr-nas03:/imsarchive. On both servers it is mounted on /var/opt/nas/imsarchive_old. everything works fine except when I cd to /var/opt/nas/imsarchive_old/slide. If I issue an ls on one of the servers it works fine gives me full list of files. On the other server it does not about 85 percent of the time. The other 15 percent it either list no files or just a few of them. Then on rare occcasion it will list them all and then immediatly issuing the command again it will not. Note there are other directories under the mountpoint and they all work fine on both servers. Its just this one subdir.

[Dennis Handly]

What OS version is the "bad" server? Are you up to date on patches?

[Anthony Walls]

# uname -a
# HP-UX bdhp4708 B.11.31.U ia 64 0635489480 unlimited user license

[Dave Olker]

Which ONCPlus software are you running?

# swlist ONCPlus

[Anthony Walls]

# swlist ONCPlus
# Initializing...
# Contacting target "bdhp4708"...
ERROR: Software "ONCPlus" was not found on host "bdhp4708:/".

[Dave Olker]

Sorry, small "p" in plus:

atcux12(/home/dolker) -> swlist ONCplus
# Initializing...
# Contacting target "atcux12"...
#
# Target: atcux12:/
#

# ONCplus B.11.31.06 ONC+ 2.3
ONCplus.NFS B.11.31.06 ONC/NFS; Network-File System,Information Services,Utilities

[Anthony Walls]

# swlist ONCplus
# Initializing...
# Contacting target "bdhp4708"...
#
# Target: bdhp4708:/
#

# ONCplus B.11.31.06 ONC+ 2.3
ONCplus.NFS B.11.31.06 ONC/NFS; Network-File System,Information Services,Utilities

[Dave Olker]

Ok, so you're running a recent version of ONCplus. I know there's an existing problem with the NFS client involving readdirplus, which may be what you're seeing.

Here's a good experiment: try mounting the filesystem from the Linux box using the "readdir" mount option:

readdir Disable the READDIRPLUS functionality, which is
used by default on an NFS Version 3 mount point,
and use the NFS Version 2 READDIR functionality
instead. The performance of applications that
read huge directories over NFS will vary between
NFS Version 2 and NFS Version 3 depending on the
type of information that the applications need.
The find command will be faster using NFS Version
3 READDIRPLUS while the ls command will be faster
using NFS Version 2 READDIR. The readdir option
must be used on a case by case basis depending
upon the application. There is no effect on an
NFS Version 2 mount point.


If that resolves your problem then you're likely experiencing the known problem we're working on for a future version of the ONCplus bundle. Please try mounting the filesystem with "-o readdir" and see if that works around the problem.

Regards,

Dave