SUMMARY: Need NFS Help

From: David Lawrence Oppenheimer (davido@mindbender.Princeton.EDU)
Date: Tue Oct 04 1994 - 14:31:51 CDT


Only a few people responded to my question, and their answers didn't really
apply in my case, so I won't repost them here.

My original question was:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Has anyone seen anything like this before?

System configuration: Sun SS/5, SunOS 4.1.3_U1B.

Machine complains "NFS server X not responding still trying" even
though there is nothing wrong with X or the network connection, etc.
It hangs in this NFS server not responding state _until_ a user on the
system cd's to a NFS-mounted directory in the partition the machine is trying
to access via NFS, and does some file operation (ls, cat, whatever) on a file
there. Then immediately the machine spits out "NFS server X OK" and
goes on for a while, but then soon enough complains "not responding" again
until
someone on the machine makes some other access to the NFS-mounted partition.

Even a "df" will unhang this "not responding" condition, but again only
temporarily (for a minute at most).

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It turns out that there was a throughput problem in the bridge bridging the
Ethernet segment my machine (NFS client) was on to the Ethernet segment the
NFS server was on. A perceptive networking person here figured out the
problem, and power cycling the bridge returned things back to normal. The
throughput on the bridge returned to normal, and NFS started working
consistantly again.

Moreover, the problem I was having had nothing to do with the NFS problems the
other machines here were having (even though they and I were running identical
OSes with identical patches, a fact which originally misled me into thinking
the problems were caused by patch incompatibilities.)

Thanks to those who responded.

David Oppenheimer
davido@phoenix.Princeton.EDU



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