2.4.19+trond and diskless locking problems

[Christian Reis <kiko@async.com.br>]

Hey there,

We've got a network with about 20 diskless boxes at a client office.
They've been running 2.4.19 (both the knfsd server and the clients) with
Trond's patches for a while now, and though performance is really nice,
occasionally one box or another will end up with a strange locking
problem. 

At bootup, and at shutdown, and for certain other tasks (reading utmp,
etc) the box hangs for a long while (during which I suspect it is trying
to lock). It hangs for about 300 seconds and then goes on normally.

When this happens, there is always a file left in /var/lib/nfs/sm
(normally there are no files in there for none of the clients, even when
they are on) for the hanging box. Is this normal?

We also occasionally get a log message in the server for this box like:

    kernel:Aug 10 17:39:22 anthem kernel: lockd: cannot monitor 192.168.99.7

Trond, can I get you more troubleshooting information, or should I try
2.4.20-pre on server *and* clients? This is a bit wierd, but since I
don't know a lot of what went on in the last changes, I'm not sure where
to start looking.

Take care,
--
Christian Reis, Senior Engineer, Async Open Source, Brazil.
http://async.com.br/~kiko/ | [+55 16] 261 2331 | NMFL