lrr@princeton.UUCP (11/03/86)
Princeton University is running Mt. Xinu's 4.3BSD with NFS on a VAX-8600 with 28Mb of memory. The VAX operates at the `home server' for a network of SUN Microsystems 3/50s with a 3/180 file server. All works well, except: Occasionally, sometimes twice in one day, sometimes not for a few weeks, we run into a condition where the system locks because a process, usually sendmail, has /usr/spool/mqueue locked and also /usr/spool. (These are separate but not exported file systems.) How can this happen, as inode manipulation should be an autonomous operation. We have turned on the ITRACE code in the kernel and fixed it to work correctly (it's wrong in SUN 3.0 too - fixes available on request - there easy) and also added code from ULTRIX 1.2 that records inode lockers and unlockers. Has anyone else seen such a problem, and if so, how did you handle it? We suspect a race condition which allows a process to continue even though it has an inode locked. Much thanks. We haven't much hair left to pull out. Larry Rogers Princeton University Department of Computer Science Engineering Quadrangle Building, Room C334 Princeton, NJ 08544 UUCP: princeton!lrr CSNET: lrr%princeton@CSnet-relay PHONE: 609 452 6483