NFS server problems with Fedora Core 1

I have a server with three NICs as a beowulf head node.
One NIC is on the motherboard as is 100Mb/s and unused.
The second and third are gigabit PCI cards, one for
the internal network, and one facing outwards.

The beowulf nodes pxe boot from the server, and then
should mount various parts of the head node's file system.

The DHCP and tftp parts work.

I was previously using Mandrake 9.1 on the server, but
many people on campus have gone to Fedora Core 1, and so
I felt that it was simpler to follow suit.

On Mandrake 9.1 the NFS mounts onto the client nodes worked.

Under Fedora Core 1 exportfs -a for half a dozen file systems
seems to take about 6 minutes. When the clients try to mount
the file systems (even if booted individually) they time out.

Has anyone else experienced this or have an inkling of what
might be going on?

Thanks

Sincerely

Aaron Turner

Aaron Turner <agt3@york.ac.uk> wrote:

> Under Fedora Core 1 exportfs -a for half a dozen file systems
> seems to take about 6 minutes. When the clients try to mount
> the file systems (even if booted individually) they time out.
>
> Has anyone else experienced this or have an inkling of what
> might be going on?

Check that the clients can do the following in a timely manner.

rpcinfo -p <server_ip>
rpcinfo -p <server_hostname>
showmount -e <server_ip>
showmount -e <server_hostname>
host <server_hostname>
host <client_ip>

If any of the delays are about 6 seconds, that's often indicative of a
DNS PTR record that is missing.

--
Cameron Kerr
cameron.kerr@paradise.net.nz : http://nzgeeks.org/cameron/
Empowered by Perl!

That's shouldn't affect the behaviour on the
server though. The server takes about 6 minutes
to export the file systems, let alone any
behaviour by the clients. To remove any obvious
DNS dependency I modified /etc/resolv.conf to
remove any DNS server references and modified
the client export list to a single machine
referenced by IP address alone. This still
takes approximately 6 minutes to export half
a dozen file systems.

The only other boxes I have on that network are
either locked down (no NFS client tools) or
need to be able to mount the NFS server's /
directory to actually boot, which is a bit of a
pain!

Thanks

Aaron Turner

Cameron Kerr wrote:
> Aaron Turner <agt3@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>Under Fedora Core 1 exportfs -a for half a dozen file systems
>>seems to take about 6 minutes. When the clients try to mount
>>the file systems (even if booted individually) they time out.
>>
>>Has anyone else experienced this or have an inkling of what
>>might be going on?
>
>
> Check that the clients can do the following in a timely manner.
>
> rpcinfo -p <server_ip>
> rpcinfo -p <server_hostname>
> showmount -e <server_ip>
> showmount -e <server_hostname>
> host <server_hostname>
> host <client_ip>
>
> If any of the delays are about 6 seconds, that's often indicative of a
> DNS PTR record that is missing.
>

Aaron Turner <agt3@york.ac.uk> wrote:
> That's shouldn't affect the behaviour on the
> server though. The server takes about 6 minutes
> to export the file systems, let alone any
> behaviour by the clients. To remove any obvious
> DNS dependency I modified /etc/resolv.conf to
> remove any DNS server references and modified
> the client export list to a single machine
> referenced by IP address alone. This still
> takes approximately 6 minutes to export half
> a dozen file systems.

So start removing all-but-one of the exported filesystems, and see if
there is any particular export that is causing the trouble.

--
Cameron Kerr
cameron.kerr@paradise.net.nz : http://nzgeeks.org/cameron/
Empowered by Perl!

Thanks - that should have been an obvious step! Doh!

It seems / is the offending export. Now I just need
to work out why...



Cameron Kerr wrote:
> Aaron Turner <agt3@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>>That's shouldn't affect the behaviour on the
>>server though. The server takes about 6 minutes
>>to export the file systems, let alone any
>>behaviour by the clients. To remove any obvious
>>DNS dependency I modified /etc/resolv.conf to
>>remove any DNS server references and modified
>>the client export list to a single machine
>>referenced by IP address alone. This still
>>takes approximately 6 minutes to export half
>>a dozen file systems.
>
>
> So start removing all-but-one of the exported filesystems, and see if
> there is any particular export that is causing the trouble.
>