Hi, > 3) Mount file system soft or hard soft > >>> NEVER mount an NFS filesystem 'hard'... if the NFS client EVER > looses contact with the NFS server, it will hang and it WILL take a > reboot to recover. > >>> By mounting 'soft', if the NFS clinet looses contact > with the NFS > server, the mount can be dealt with, ie. unmounted, with a > little work.
That's not a good advice, IMO. Only use the soft mount, if the filesystem is mounted read-only. Otherwise this could lead to data corruption. For read-write mounted filesystems, use the intr option. Here's an excerpt of the AIX Performance Management Guide: "One of the choices you make when configuring NFS-mounted directories is whether the mounts will be hard (-o hard) or soft (-o soft). When, after a successful mount, an access to a soft-mounted directory encounters an error (typically, a timeout), the error is immediately reported to the program that requested the remote access. When an access to a hard-mounted directory encounters an error, NFS retries the operation. A persistent error accessing a hard-mounted directory can escalate into a perceived performance problem because the default number of retries (1000) and the default timeout value (0.7 second), combined with an algorithm that increases the timeout value for successive retries, mean that NFS continues to try to complete the operation. It is technically possible to reduce the number of retries, or increase the timeout value, or both, using options of the mount command. Unfortunately, changing these values sufficiently to remove the perceived performance problem might lead to unnecessary reported hard errors. Instead, use the intr option to mount the hard-mounted directories, which allows the user to interrupt from the keyboard a process that is in a retry loop. Although soft-mounting the directories causes the error to be detected sooner, it runs a serious risk of data corruption. In general, read/write directories should be hard-mounted." Dirk
