General hang on nfs mounted directory

[Antonello]

Hi
Platform : hp rp8400 hp ux 11.11
We had a problem with a sub-directory belonging to a nfs mounted qtree.
At a certain time it was impossible to get information from a file with "ls -la" or whatever command ( du -sk, fuser, eben truss of the process that reasonably handled that file ) that implied the status of a particular file of that directory; all the commands hanged indefinitely and the only way to get rid was to kill the father process, when possible, in fact some of them simply passes the process to init with pid 1.
We think that there was some issue with the nfs server ..
Any idea?

Thanks a lot

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi

This is a common effect if the remote mounted nfs dir is not available.

The rule is:- if a nfs file system is going to become unavailable then unmount it from the system during this period.

During a boot a server can hang looking for a remote NFS system that is not available.

Paula

[Scott Palmer_1]

I agree, this is a common problem with NFS. If the NFS file system is a critical files system, you can think about MC/Service guard and the NFS tool kit. This will allow another node to take control of the file system in the event of the NFS server going down.

Regards,

Scott

[Antonello]

Thanks to all of you for the prompt response.
Yes, it is correct that when NFS server is down or unavailable i get stale, but this was a strange behaviour.
Qtree from Netapp filer is mounted with options
nfs ,bg,hard,intr,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,proto=udp,vers=3,suid 0 0

to serve a 9i Oracle Database server.
I could list without problem all the files but one, that caused indefinite hang to whatever command trying to get its attribute, as i mentioned before.
There were some "nfs server not responding, still trying " , but it never happened things like that, i mean hanging of commands.

Antonello

[Brian Hackley]

Hi,

NFS Problems are usually something happening on the network, or the NFS Server. If you have Ethereal on the rp8400, or can download it to a PC on the same network, take a network trace and find out what's happening there.

You didn't say if you were using NFS mounts, or AutoFS mounts. If you are using AutoFS, pick up the free Enhanced AutoFS software bundle from http://software.hp.com.

In either case I would also recommend that you should make sure you have the latest ONC patch for NFS PHNE_29783
1Liner s700_800 11.11 ONC/NFS General Release/Performance Patch
Make sure you get all the dependency patches too!

Hope that helps a little,
-> Brian Hackley