From: sears@tree.egr.uh.edu (Paul S. Sears)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
Subject: Re: NFS problems
Date: 20 Nov 1992 15:29:27 GMT
Organization: University of Houston
Reply-To: sears@tree.egr.uh.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: thanatos.egr.uh.edu

In article <1992Nov20.125808.3461@email.tuwien.ac.at>  
rainer@ruble.fml.tuwien.ac.at (Rainer Staringer) writes:
=>I have an annoying problem that (so it seems to me) started after we
=>upgraded two of our NeXTs to 3.0 and started using one of them as an
=>NFS server.
=>
=>In random intervals (approx 1/day) all the machines in our little network
=>(2 NeXTs running 2.1, one of them serving /Users and /usr/spool/mail,
=>2 NeXTs running 3.0, one of them serving /LocalApps and /usr/local) will
=>hang with the 'NFS server xxx not responding' message. Sometimes the
=>problem goes away, sometimes you have to reboot the servers, sometimes
=>one of the machines will panic. I found the following in /usr/adm/messages
=>(ruble/mailhost/128.130.167.130 is the 2.1 server, moolah is the 3.0  
server):
=>
=>Nov 20 13:31:25 moolah mach: NFS server ruble not responding still trying
=>Nov 20 13:31:29 moolah mach: nfs_server: bad sendreply from 128.130.167.130
=>Nov 20 13:31:36 moolah last message repeated 2 times
=>Nov 20 13:31:42 moolah mach: NFS server mailhost not responding still trying
=>Nov 20 13:31:44 moolah mach: nfs_server: bad sendreply from 128.130.167.130
=>Nov 20 13:32:02 moolah mach: nfs_server: bad sendreply from 128.130.167.130
=>Nov 20 13:33:42 moolah last message repeated 9 times
=>
=>The panic happened here (said something about ns_timeout table overflow).
=>
=>Nov 20 13:33:57 moolah syslogd: going down on signal 15
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah mach: Killing all processes NFS server ruble ok
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah mach: 
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah mach: continuing
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah mach: unmounting / ... done
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah last message repeated 4 times
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah mach: unmounting /Users ... done
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah mach: unmounting /server ... done
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah mach: unmounting / ... done
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah mach: unmounting /nn ... done
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah mach: unmounting / ... done
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah mach: unmounting / ... done
=>Nov 20 13:34:51 moolah mach: rebooting Mach...
=>
=>Does anybody have a hint what could be causing this?? It really starts to
=>get annoying, and I have not the slightest idea what we did wrong.
=>
=>	Rainer
=>--
=>Rainer Staringer                   | rainer@fml.tuwien.ac.at
=>Financial Markets Lab, TU Vienna   | +43 (1) 58801/8138

This sounds like the problem we were having here for awhile.  First, do a "ps  
-aux" on your servers when your clients get the NFS server not responding  
message.  See which process is using up the most cpu.  My hunch is that  
lookupd might be the culprit.  It this is indeed the case, then your problem  
most likely involves netgroups, if you are using them.  Please post more  
information about your problem.

When the server panicked, there should have been a reason for the panic in the  
little window.  It is very helpful to post the panic messages so we have a  
better idea of what was going on.  

--
Paul S. Sears                *  sears@uh.edu (NeXT Mail OK)
The University of Houston    *  suggestions@tree.egr.uh.edu (NeXT
Engineering Computing Center *  comments, complaints, questions)
NeXT System Administration   *  DoD#1967 '83 NightHawk 650SC 
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