nfs hangup

[Randy Tarrier]

I've painted myself into a corner. I can't get rid of an nfs mount point.
I mounted a cdrom using:
pfs mountd &
pfsd &
pfs_mount /cdrom
Foolishly, I killed the session before I did a pfs_umount /cdrom
Now, I can't get rid of anything that accesses that mount point, including bdf!
I get the infamous "NFS server not responding still trying"
I tried the pfs_umount /cdrom- it is still hanging, I can't kill it...
I've tried to kill nfsd- no luck...
I tried changing the nointr to intr in /etc/mnttab, it changed it back to nointr...
I removed the entry in /etc/mnttab -it put it back...
I tried going into SAM and starting NFS, it hangs when doing a bdf...
Do I need to get rid of the entry in /etc/pfs_fstab?
If I reboot (last resort), will it see the entry in mnttab and start nfsd, even tho I've set the NFS_SERVER=0 in /etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf?
I really don't want to reboot unless necessary, and I'm not sure that's a guarantee.
Anybody have a great idea?

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Randy,

pfs_mount on its own is a pain and now this. guess reboot is the only choice left for you.

Go ahead and reboot.

hope this helps.

Regds

[Marco Paganini]

Hello,

I normally mount NFS with the '-o soft' option. The default (-o hard) will try indefinitely until the NFS server responds (causing annoying hangs if it's not there anymore). The "-o soft" option causes it to fail after a specified amount of time.

Regards,
Paga

[Duncan Edmonstone · Accepted solution]

No - the mnttab file will be re-created during reboot. One last thing to try before you reboot - have you tried using the -c option on pfs_umount? (works very occasionaly)

PFS is an absolute swine for doing this. Now if I use a CD which requires PFS (usually oracle) I always unmount it immediately after I am finished, and then terminate the PFS daemons.

HTH

Duncan

[David Lodge]

The annoyance of PFS (enough to start me ranting)...

Because PFS runs on top of NFS and because NFS has a direct link to the kernel (through nfskd) if PFS has a minor problem (it not being the world's most stable product) with anything then it will hang and cause the mount point to become unresposive.

Unfortunately at this point the only resort left is a reboot (as the problem is at kernel level you can't kill it) - and even in some cases a power cycle...

dave (when will HP support other CD formats natively?)

[Randy Tarrier]

Duncan,
I already tried that, it's still hanging out there. One thing I noticed was there was no entry in fstab or pfs_mtab. I cloned pfs_fstab to pfs_mtab. Should I rm pfs_mtab before I reboot, or does that get created as well?

[Duncan Edmonstone]

The only file systems that will get re-mounted at boot time are those in /etc/fstab.

HTH

Duncan

[Duncan Edmonstone]

.... unless your running ServiceGuard of course....


but then you wouldn't be starting NFS services which muck around in the kernel!!

[Krishna Prasad]

A reboot will clear the pfs_mount problem...

One more thing to try before you have to reboot.

fuser -cu /pfs_mount_point

Or try to restart the pfs_mountd of pfsd process.

[Randy Tarrier]

Thanks, all. I wound up doing shutdown -r, even this didn't kill all the processes!! I had to do a power cycle ged rid of the (sic) demon! Live & learn!