pfs_mount weirdness

[Joyce Prue]

I've read a lot of forum entires about all the problems with this pfs_mounting but I ran into a really weird situation today. I was able to get my CD pfs_mounted with no problem. I could browse the CD and was able to start the Oracle installer from the CD. Then, about 9% into my Oracle install, I started getting the massages about an NFS problem with /cdrom (I forgot to write down the exact message - sorry). Once I get that message, my telnet session completely hangs. I can access the machine with another telnet session but if I try to do a bdf, it hangs again. I can't kill any of the hung sessions. A reboot is the only thing that gets me out of it. This machine is running 11.11. Does anyone have any ideas what might be happening? I've done these pfs mounts many times (with problems about 10% of the time) although I've never had this particular symptom. I'm grateful for any suggetions.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Joyce:

Ah yes, the hated pfs_mount!

At least hope is on the way for 11.0 and already available on 11.11. That is, for an alternative to these nasty daemons see this thread:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x98aaba808b46d611abda0090277a778c,00.html

Regards!

...JRF...

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

Hi Joyce

You will have to bounce the machine . There is no way you can get out of it , I will list down the following to avoid pfs mishaps :

Mounting the CDROM

1.pfs_mountd &
2.pfsd &
3.pfs_mount /dev/dsk/cxtydz /SD_CDROM .

Umounting

never use umount to unmount cd mounted through pfs , use pfs_umount , incase there are remanent processes use ps -aef | grep pfs and them kill from the least to the highest .


Manoj Srivastava

[PIYUSH D. PATEL]

Hi,

Use the soft option..

# pfs_mount -o ro,soft /dev/dsk/cxtydz /SD_CDROM

It is important to use the 'soft' mount option in this command. The default setting specifies a 'hard' mount and can result in hangs of lmx.srv processes, if there are failures of the PFS mount being used as an AS/U share.

Piyush

[Joyce Prue]

James - I'm trying to download the patches now. I couldn't find PHKL_25760 so I hope the other 2 do the trick. I'll let you know tomorrow.

Manoj - I really didn't have a problem getting the cd mounted. My problem is that it somehow got confused after I accessed it for a while.

[Dave Chamberlin · Accepted solution]

Joyce,

You might try looking at the syslog.log file in /var/adm/syslog for that complete error message. On the problem, this may be a longshot, but is your home directory (or the directory you were logged in to) NFS mounted from elsewhere? At my previous workplace we NFS mounted home directories to many systems to allow consistency. An NFS problem would cause a hangup for any apps being run in that session. You might try running the installer from the console terminal if that could be your problem.

[Joyce Prue]

Dave, That's a good idea. I'll take a look at the syslog when my patch install finishes.

Unfortunately I can't do the install from the console. We only have a text console and Oracle *requires* a X terminal for the installer.

[John Poff]

Hello,

I've found that I have better luck with it when I've made sure that the statd and lockd daemons were running before I fired up the pfs daemons.

JP

[Joyce Prue]

Dave, I think you win the prize. Since I've had problems with PFS in the past, I just assumed that was my problem. Now I wish it was. According to my syslog.log, I have an "excessive number of new media-defects" on my system drive. Not a good message. It looks like hardware problems not software probelms are causing my weirdness.

Thanks to everyone for your advise. I'll still try to new mount procedure once I get my defective drive fixed.