On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 11:00 -0500, Todd Denniston wrote:
John Austin wrote, On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:21:58 +0000:
> On Mon, 2009-11-23 at 15:00 -0800, Rick Stevens wrote:
>> On 11/21/2009 10:41 AM, John Austin wrote:
>>> On Sat, 2009-11-21 at 11:11 -0700, Greg Woods wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 2009-11-21 at 10:09 +0000, John Austin wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> When copying a large file (2.7GB) from the server to the
>>>>> F12 m/c a complete freeze of the F12 machine occurs.
>>>>
>>>> I haven't seen freezes, but I have seen corruption when trying to
copy
>>>> large files (e.g. like a DVD iso image) via NFS. In fact, this happened
>>>> to me when I was trying to install an F12 virtual machine on my F11 box
>>>> (so I could try it out before deciding whether or not to bite the
bullet
>>>> and upgrade the host OS). I copied over the DVD iso image, then tried
to
>>>> install a VM from it, and it failed the media test. Sure enough, it
also
>>>> failed the sha256sum test. Copying the same DVD iso file via scp
instead
>>>> worked fine. I do not trust NFS for large files.
>>>>
>>>> --Greg
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Hi Greg
>>>
>>> That's interesting and very worrying - surely it can't/shouldn't
happen!
>>>
>>> I have been using NFS for years for all types/sizes of files and
>>> never had a problem until the last couple of months.
>>>
>>> 1. The Centos/RHEL 5.3/5.4 kernel had a serious bug that has been fixed
with the
>>> latest kernel update
>>>
>>> 2. Now this F12 problem
>>>
>>> Surely a very large worldwide community uses NFS ?
>>>
>>> OK the F12 case could be my finger trouble or even a hardware problem
>>>
>>> I will install F12 on a second machine and test again (against the same
server)
>> Can you verify that you run into the same issue if you run NFS over TCP
>> as opposed to NFS over UDP (it's an option in the mount command on the
>> client, use either "proto=tcp" or "proto=udp").
>>
>> By default, the system queries the server and selects a protocol based
>> on what's being asked of it. See the "TRANSPORT METHODS" section
of
>> "man nfs".
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer ricks(a)nerd.com -
>> - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 22643734 Yahoo: origrps2 -
>> - -
>> - The Theory of Rapitivity: E=MC Hammer -
>> - -- Glenn Marcus (via
TopFive.com) -
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Hi Rick
>
> Many thanks for the reply - you have found a work-around !!
>
> Just tested my machine with UDP and TCP
> This was using md5sum for about 10GB over the NFS mount
>
> 1. The default for F12/Centos5.4 appears to be TCP - which freezes
> 2. Forcing UDP gives NO errors for 10GB transfer
> 3. Forcing TCP gives a freeze
>
> Having briefly read the man pages this is the opposite of what I would
> expect and of what you suggest !!
>
> There must be a timing problem somewhere -
>
> Please see the other thread "Sky2 NIC Problem? - Was F12 NFS Failures"
> for other tests I have carried out
>
> Regards
>
> John
>
>
>
>
what are your other mount options?
having seen the "Sky2 NIC Problem" message, your card/driver may be having
issues, but some nfs
options may help/hurt.
I am assuming that you only have 'hard' and not 'hard,intr' as options to
the mount.
And for transferring large files over NFS, I have had experiences that say stay away from
'soft' NFS.
it is interesting that TCP nfs locks the machine and fails to copy the very large file,
while UDP
succeeds in copying the same file with the same device/drver. BTW when you say that UDP
gave no
errors, do you mean that from the user program perspective (cp, and then sha256sum) there
were no
errors, or that from both the user and syslog perspective there were no errors?
Purely from the user point of view, I did not check the number of
re-transmission, log files etc.
I am wondering if
you have found a place where the UDP code deals with a bad packet correctly and the TCP
version has
not seen enough (bad environment) testing.
Wouldn't happen to have a serial cable around so you can
capture where the kernel goes bonkers at would you? (note, never done the serial console
myself.)
I've probably got a serial cable in the roof somewhere but the machine
has no serial ports! Shuttle SA76G2.
Hi Todd
I must admit that I have basically given up with the sky2 driver for the
moment.
I gave up after reading about problems with the sky2 driver way back to
something like 2.6.18.
I had a spare D-Link gigabit NIC and have been using that.
My whole network depends on NFS working perfectly so a dodgy driver is
no use to me.
It must be a very subtle bug as I cannot cause the freeze with
1. scp 10GB across the network
2. md5sum across a CIFS samba mount
3. md5sum across NFS4 UDP
Maybe you are right and it would fail if I tried harder/longer
Regards
John