Re: Serious server-side NFS problem

[Matthew Dillon]

:>    NFS uses the kernel 'boottime' structure to generate its version id.
:>    Now normally you might believe that this structure, once set, will
:>    never change.  The authors of NFS certainly make that assumption!
:
:Is this another case of "lets assume the time of day is a random number" or
:is there any underlying assumption about time in this ?
:
:--
:Poul-Henning Kamp             FreeBSD coreteam member
:[EMAIL PROTECTED]               "Real hackers run -current on their laptop."

    It basically needs to be a unique for each server reboot in order
    to allow clients to resynchronize.  The time has historically been
    used for this purpose since NFS networks tend to require ntp 
    synchronization anyway.  The time was used even before systems 
    had realtime clocks -- the kernel would load it's initial
    time from the last access time stamp in the root filesystem (or
    superblock, I forget which it was).

    Under NFSv2 it wasn't as critical.  Under NFSv3 the protocol will
    break badly if the number stays the same across a reboot - there
    would be a massive loss of data.

                                        -Matt
                                        Matthew Dillon 
                                        <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


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