Current NFS issues (2.5.59)

[David Ford <david+powerix@blue-labs.org>]

Ok.  Here goes.  I have two servers that NFS mount from each other and 
provide.

Server 1 exports A, B, and C to server 2.  Server 2 exports D and E back 
to server 1 and exports F and G to two other clients.  Each of these 
(A-G) are distinctly different filesystem paths and not part of each other.

1. If server 1 is restarted, server 2 will invalidate (make all 'df' 
values '1') F and G.  This requires an 'exportfs -vra' or similar on 
server 2 to fix the client 'df' values.  The client doesn't need to do 
anything.

2. Repeated nfs system stops and starts (/etc/init.d/nfs restart) will 
eventually cause a kernel panic on server 2 (haven't tested on server 
1).   The number of restarts is variable.

3. Mount point F (/home/david) infrequently loops.  ls -la /home/david 
will loop forever until all client memory is exhausted and the kernel 
kills it via OOM.  ls -la /home/david/somefile or /home/david/somedir/ 
works just fine as well as any sub directory under /home/david.  
Restarts of both systems refuse to fix things.

4. Mounts infrequently get "permission denied" messages on the client 
with a " rpc.mountd: getfh failed: Operation not permitted" message on 
the server.  This is fixable by restarting the nfs system on the server.


Server1 is UNI, server 2 is SMP.  All servers and clients are stock 
2.5.59[1].  NFS is running on top of Reiserfs filesystems on all client 
and server machines.

I'll be happy to apply test patches to either clients or servers.

David

[1] One client is 2.5.56 but it rarely accesses the NFS mount unlike the 
other machines which use them constantly