slow NFS mail partition

From: Andrew Gillies <A.Gillies_at_anc.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 09:40:05 +0100 (BST)

Hi All

All our machines mount /usr/var/spool/mail from a single mail server
(alpha pw 433 running 4.0C). I have just made our
/usr/var/spool/mail partition on the mail server into an advfs fileset
(was UFS partition). One of the users on an XP1000 (running 4.0F)
uses dtmail to read mail, and now finds delete/destroy commands to be
*very* slow. His mail file is only 500Kb, and takes 20-30s to save. I
have checked out a few things:

  The pw433 and XP1000 communicate via NFS3 (as expected). All nfsiod
  and nfsd present and operational. The NFS server is not heavily used.
 
  A trace on dtmail reveals it waits on a "writev" of the temporary
  file in /usr/var/spool/mail.

  While dtmail is writing this temporary file (and the dtmail is
  waiting) a terminal window on the XP1000 also hangs with the simple
  command
    ls -alF /usr/var/spool/mail
  until the dtmail has finished.

  A simple cp /usr/var/spool/mail/user1 /usr/var/spool/mail/user1-bak
  run on the XP1000 works fine and at the usual speed.

  Both machines are connected to 100Mb/s switch Full Duplex.

I am not at all sure whats going on or what else to check. If anyone
has some advice or pointers, they would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Andrew
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Andrew Gillies
Institute for Adaptive & Neural Computation
Division of Informatics EMAIL A.Gillies_at_anc.ed.ac.uk
2 Buccleuch Place PHONE +44 (0)131 650 4408
Edinburgh EH8 9LW FAX +44 (0)131 650 4406
Scotland WEB http://anc.ed.ac.uk/
Received on Thu Aug 12 1999 - 08:42:42 NZST

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