vmunix: NFS server <servername> not responding still trying

[Jeff Pendleton]

I find this line sporadically in my clients (hp-ux 10.20) syslog file:

vmunix: NFS server not responding still trying

What does it mean?

Probably a temporarily congestion on the local ethernet?

I checked with ping (between client and nfs-server) and had no packet losses while receiving the entry in syslog.

Is the nfs-server overloaded?

I don't think so.

Any ideas, what the entry means?

Thanks

[CHRIS_ANORUO]

On the client, use SAM to increase the Mount failure rate(retry), retrans and the timeo before doing at command line prompt /sbin/init.d/nfs.client start
I hope you have created the directory.

[Robert Gamble]

I have seen this many times before.
If a system has NFS mounted the other system since the last reboot, it will keep checking to see if its availiable. If the other system gets rebooted or goes off the network, that error message will happen. Check the time the error message was reported, it should coincide with a small downtime or outage for the other system.

Good Luck!

[Anthony Goonetilleke]

Have a look at Doc ID KBAN00000261
It has some really good NFS tuning tips

[Nikhil Chaudhari · Accepted solution]

HI

When anyone is trying to mount NFS the person has to check the following daemons should be running on the server.

NFSD
RPCBIND/PORTMAPPER
RPC.STATD
RPC.LOCKD
RPC.MOUNTD


Pls check this with the help of command

rpcinfo -p

which will show you what is running in your system.

For NFS mount check the server and client /etc/hosts file.

there should have entry for both client and server.
try to ping to both the server and client and check whether it is through.


Also check the /etc/exports file on the server to check wich file system server has given permission to export.try to see the file /etc/xtab after giving the command

exportfs -a or
try to type the command on sever

/sbin/init.d/nfs.server start
/sbin/init.d/nfs.client start

Then try to mount the file system like
try the following command on client.

mount -o soft server name:/file system name /mounted file system name on client.

rememeber always server is exporting and client is mounting a file system.

Hope this will sort out your problem.

Regards

Nikhil

[news groups]

Thank you for the answer, next i will try to increase the timeo option, as you mentioned.

on my studies i discovered another aspect:

using

netstat -s

on the nfs-server i saw the following output for udp:

udp:
0 incomplete headers
0 bad data length fields
0 bad checksums
25682 socket overflows # !
0 data discards

now i assume that the log-entries in my clients syslog files belong to socket overflows on the server, which belongs to a number of running nfsd's which is too small.

my nfs-server has 64 nfsd's running (configured throug NUM_NFSD switch in nfsd.conf ) .

is it possible that this server-side number is too small for 16 client-workstations running a CAD-client program (IDEAS MS7)?

thanks

[Emmanuel Eyer]

It depends...

I read once that the number of nfsd's should be equal to the sum of all biod's of all clients... Sounds a bit silly, unless all clients are using the maximal amount of NFS connections simultaneously !

A silly way to determine the number of nfsd's required: set up a large number (100 or more); put the system in "real life config" (have the clients use it), run the top command on the server, and count how many nfsd's are active (on top of the list). I told you it is silly... ;-)

Hope it helps, Emmanuel