Dear Managers,
We are having a recurring problem with a number of our Alphas running
Digital Unix 3.2 (not 3.2A or 3.2C as yet).
The problem has occured on a number of our machines, but generally is
confined to our main server. Periodically (about once per week) the machine
refuses any NFS requests. Although the server itself is fine all other
machines report "NFS3 server xxx not responding still trying".
The machine that fails most often serves a lot of home directories via the
automounter - home directories of each user appear as /home/id in the
password file and get mapped to a disk by the automounter - as well as
other filesystems. We use the DEC supplied automounter. We did not have
any problems before moving to 3.2.
The machine does not appear to be overloaded (typically 15 users on the
server, about 30 on other machines, about 120 user processes).
Free memory is continuously low ( ~150 free pages), but I didn't think this
was a problem as there is 90% swapspace free. There is no obvious change
preceeding the NFS hang occurs. I have 128MB of memory and Maxusers is set \
to 128. I am running 15 nfs daemons which spend most of their time in
the `I' state ( the automounter is in `S' ) whether NFS is working correctly
or not.
My only solution is too reboot. The shutdown always hangs, usually when
killing the automounter.
I am assuming that the automounter is the problem and I am running out
of some related resource, but I don't know what that is. Can anyone help
or suggest things I should be looking at ?
Thanks,
Paul
+ Paul Collison p.collison1_at_physics.oxford.ac.uk +
| Starlink Computer Systems Manager |
| Astrophysics, Nuclear and Astrophysics Lab., tel: +44 1865 273311 |
+ Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3RH, ENGLAND. fax: +44 1865 273418 +
Received on Fri Oct 13 1995 - 18:12:15 NZDT