scottt@nosun.west.sun.com (Scott Todd) (06/12/90)
I had a truely annoying problem earlier today, Files in my network were being temporarly replaced with files of the right length and date/time. These files were filled with the string "I'm out running around", and were padded to length with nulls. I get the impression that the replacement part is a known problem with Sun-NFS. Can anyone out there tell me what the problem is? And, what causes it to be set off? Also, I am very curious where the message "I'm out running around" comes from. I'm running 4.0.3c on about 40 Sun's mostly SPARC Stations and 386i's. The main server is a 4/390. Scott Todd Cadre ...!sun!nosun!microcase!scottt
jayl@cs.utexas.edu (Jay Lessert) (06/13/90)
In article <8772@brazos.Rice.edu> Scott Todd writes: > >I had a truely annoying problem earlier today, Files in my network were >being temporarly replaced with files of the right length and date/time. >These files were filled with the string "I'm out running around", and were >padded to length with nulls. Bugid 1026933, "NFS Confused File". Exists in SunOS 4.0.x and 4.1. As of about a month ago, the bug and appropriate fixes were very well understood by Sun. A fully-QA'ed production patch for 4.0.3 is currently scheduled to be released in July. The same for 4.1 should be available much sooner (maybe even now), since there are fewer (or no) other NFS patches to be compatible with... Grossly oversimplified (all my feeble brain is capable of understanding), the problem is that an NFS client can become confused about whether a given linked list of vmpages is allocated or not, and to which file. So the system literally reads a vmpage, thinking it contains "file1" already in memory, when in fact that vmpage has more recently been used to write "file2". Oops. Nothing wrong with the *real* contents of the file (on disk on the server). Our experience is that the best thing to do is immediately reboot the client. One thing for sure is that your NFS client has an application program that writes the string "I'm out running around" to a file. This application may or may not contribute to triggering the bug. In the hardware configuration you mention (mostly SS1's with a single 4/390 server) there is probably nothing you can do to prevent the bug from occurring. Jay Lessert {ogicse,sun,decwrl}!bit!jayl Bipolar Integrated Technology, Inc. 503-629-5490 (fax)503-690-1498
pvo@sapphire.oce.orst.edu (Paul O'Neill) (06/14/90)
mysun% ls -alFgt | head total 1407 -rw-rw-r-- 1 pvo pvo 23 Jun 13 20:41 .msgfile drwxrwxr-x 12 pvo pvo 13312 Jun 13 03:43 ./ -rw-rw-r-- 1 pvo pvo 24052 Jun 13 03:43 .newsrc -rw-rw-r-- 1 pvo pvo 671 Jun 13 03:42 .article -rw-rw-r-- 1 pvo pvo 31 Jun 13 03:38 .rnlast -rw-rw-r-- 1 pvo pvo 24038 Jun 13 03:37 .newsrc.2 -rw-rw-r-- 1 pvo pvo 24052 Jun 13 03:37 .newsrc.1 -rw------- 1 pvo pvo 61 Jun 13 00:42 dead.letter -rw-rw-r-- 1 pvo pvo 24052 Jun 12 22:49 .oldnewsrc mysun% cat .msgfile I'm out running around.mysun% mysun% cd wrkv/calentool /home/server/usr3/pvo/calentool mysun% grep 'running around' *.c calentool.c: fprintf(msgf, "I'm out running around."); mysun% .msgfile is used by the `nlock' screenlocking program. Other than this, how do you like calentool? (It took me 6 months to find this one. At first I thought it was a worm or virus! :-) Paul O'Neill pvo@oce.orst.edu Coastal Imaging Lab OSU--Oceanography Corvallis, OR 97331 503-737-3251