From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jul 25 17:37:26 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8182416A418 for ; Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:37:26 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rees@citi.umich.edu) Received: from citi.umich.edu (citi.umich.edu [141.211.133.111]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5E5F313C465 for ; Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:37:26 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rees@citi.umich.edu) Received: from citi.umich.edu (dumaguete.citi.umich.edu [141.211.133.51]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client CN "Jim Rees", Issuer "CITI Production KCA" (verified OK)) by citi.umich.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7AAA047C2; Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:12:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:12:14 -0400 From: Jim Rees To: Rick Macklem Message-ID: <20070725171214.GC25749@citi.umich.edu> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Cc: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: handling unresonsive NFS servers X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:37:26 -0000 Afs has the same problem, and solves it by marking a server "down" when it doesn't respond. The timeout is very long, like a minute or more. Normally this would permanently hang the client, but once the server is marked down, any subsequent operations fail immediately. The client checks periodically to see if the server has come back up. Failing this way is better than waiting forever, because waiting forever results in a reboot when the machine's owner runs out of patience. And by all means, do fix umount -f.