Dear AFS support,
On rs_aix41 clients running AFS 3.4a, we are observing AFS outages
while releasing high-level volumes. These outages do NOT occur on
rs_aix32 clients running AFS 3.3a. Here is how to reproduce the
problem:
On both types of clients, I start a loop
while true; do
cd /
/bin/pwd
cd /afs/zurich.ibm.com/u/nik
/bin/pwd
done
As expected, the loop prints out / and /afs/zurich.ibm.com/u/nik
alternately. Now I 'vos release u' to release the RO volume containing
/afs/zurich.ibm.com/u. While the RO clones are being recreated, the
loops on both clients show a short hickup. After a hang of maybe one
second, the rs_aix32 client running AFS 3.3a continues changing
directories back and forth. However, the rs_aix41 client running AFS
3.4a decides to complain about my home directory: 'The specified
directory is not valid.', and running applications get into trouble
because they cannot stat files anymore. The directory comes back by
itself after a couple of minutes, or after I run 'fs checkvolumes'
explicitly.
A similar problem was mentioned in Info-AFS already on 23 May 1996.
Somebody talked about 4.45 builds of 'vos' and 'volserver' fixing such
a situation. However, since the AFS 3.3a client doesn't exhibit the
problem, it looks more like a problem of the AFS 3.4a client not
dealing correctly with the messages coming back from the server than
with the server itself. The server is also rs_aix32 running AFS 3.3a,
and has proven very reliable. It don't want to install AIX 4.1 or AFS
3.4a on it for the time being.
I just checked
/afs/transarc.com/product/afs/3.4a/rs_aix41/root.client/usr/vice/etc
for available client patches. However, all the relevant files are dated
28 March 1996 and are apparently identical to the code I am running.
I urgently need that problem fixed. I consider it a show-stopper for
rolling out AIX 4.1 on our client machines, which we have scheduled for
21 Jun 1996.
--
Michael Niksch TEL: +41-1-7248-913
IBM Zurich Research Laboratory FAX: +41-1-7240904
Saeumerstrasse 4 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (NIK at ZURICH)
CH-8803 Rueschlikon / Switzerland http://www.zurich.ibm.com/~nik/
