NFS client issue

[Jason Joines]

Net Llama! wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Jan 2007, Jason Joines wrote:
>> Net Llama! wrote:
>>> On Fri, 26 Jan 2007, Jason Joines wrote:
>>>
>>>>    I have a bunch of boxes backing themselves up to an NFS server.  One
>>>> of them suddenly stopped working, it can no longer mount the NFS
>>>> export.  Doesn't seem to be an issue with the server as all the other
>>>> clients are still working just fine.
>>>>
>>>>    The failing client is an old SuSE 8.1 box with a 2.4.19 kernel and
>>>> the server is OpenSuSE 10.0 with a 2.6.13 kernel.  The output of the
>>>> failed backup script reports "mount: RPC: Port mapper failure - RPC:
>>>> Timed out".  portmap is running on the client and I've restarted it but
>>>> that didn't help.
>>>>    The other clients are all SuSE with versions ranging from 8.0 to 10.0.
>>>>
>>>>    I tried to do the mount manually a few times ( same server but
>>>> different exports and local mount points ) and each resulted in a hung
>>>> mount process.  The int option was used each time but none of the mount
>>>> processes can be killed even those with the soft option.  The mount
>>>> called from the script does not result in a hang, it just fails.  Only
>>>> the manual attempts hang and have now been hung for over 18 hours.
>>>>
>>>>    Using rpcinfo, the client can list the services registered with RPC
>>>> on itself and on the server including portmapper, nfs, and mountd.  I'm
>>>> using TCP.
>>>>    During one of the mount attempts I logged all the network traffic
>>>> between the client and the server.  The client contacted portmap on the
>>>> server and got replies, it then contacted mountd on the server and got
>>>> replies.  However, it never sent anything to nfs on the server.
>>> What does this return from the broken system?
>>> showmount -e $servername
>>>
>>
>>
>>     Thanks, I hadn't run across showmount before.  In this case it
>> showed all the exports on the server along with a list of all the hosts
>> allowed to mount it including the host name of the broken client.  The
>> output was identical on a working client.
>>
>>     Also, the server does log the mount attempt from the broken client:
>>
>> Jan 26 08:19:54 siva rpc.mountd: authenticated mount request from
>> broken-client:885 for /local/backup/weekly (/local/backup/weekly).
>>
>>     It's just the client then never tries to connect to nfs on the server.
> 
> Oh the irony.  I ran into this mess just yesterday, and it turned out to 
> be some kind of NFS server side horkage that went away only after 
> rebooting.  I'm not sure that helps with your problem though.  sorry.
> 



     Did rebooting the server fix your problem or did you have to reboot 
the client?  In my case rebooting the server is no problem as it's only 
purpose is for backups, none are scheduled until later tonight and I can 
reboot it remotely.  However, the client is being used by lots of folks 
and will be more problematic to have to reboot.