leland@DRAGONFLY.WRI.COM (05/28/91)
I mentioned this in a past posting, but now that I've had more time to work with the problems. Do not install NFS 2.2 unless you like running salvol. What follows is a list of problems, and a short summary of a support call I recently made on the subject. Streams do not work properly under nfs 2.2. After long edit sessions with the DM, the stream seems to go away. Trying to save or close the file gets "attempt to seek before beginning of stream." Shortly afterwards, the DM locks up. The problem is most pronounced when trying to do I/O simultaneously with nfs accesses. For instance, writing a cartridge tape while editing on an nfs mounted partition will almost without fail cause my node to lock. tcpd crashes frequently under nfs 2.2. By frequently, I mean 4-6 times per day. The result causes all tcp services to fail and requires a reboot. It is especially apparent when doing repeated copies from nfs via a shell script. Often, the streams mechanism gets confused and locks up the node. As a result of these problems, I placed a support call on nfs and received the following answer. vfork(2) is broken. It most strongly affects csh. Using nfs 2.2, do not use csh. Use the Bourne shell. There is, and will not, a patch for this problem. The next version of nfs is in beta and should be released soon. I have changed to the Bourne shell, and while the problems are reduced, they have by no means gone away. I now reboot 3 times/day instead of 8 times/day. Also, productivity is greatly reduced (if I access more than two or three nfs volumes at once, I crash). Its true that my use of nfs is in a fairly punishing environment, and it is true that here nfs is used extensively. However, there is no excuse -- none -- for shipping a product that fails so dramatically. HP should be compelled to stop ship this product NOW, and simply hold off until a good version is available. Leland Ray Systems Adminstrator, WRI (217) 398-0700