On Thu, May 26, 2005 at 05:06:02PM -0700, Christian Seberino wrote: > Lan > > Thanks! What is async and why fixes NFS problems like slowness? > I use Autofs to NFS mount directories. Does this async > gotcha still apply? > > Chris >
'K, I'm doing this from memory. For real information, goto the Linux Documentation Project. There are two kinds of NFS mount, hard and soft. Hard mounts demand a response ... they wait on the connection. Soft mounts send something and then go on to do other business ... they'll attend to the return if and when it comes back. This is actually a fundamental configuration to any socket connection. I consider hard mounts in NFS to be an anachronism to when networks couldn't be trusted to pass information, and critical systems simply had to wait for the response. There may be uses today in other socket connections, like requests that have to be serviced before the requester can continue, but in NFS I don't see the point. Go soft all the time is my attitude. The reason a hard mount can cause slowness is that the server may have other things it's doing, and the response to your request may be delayed. If so, your box is going to wait on the return before it does anything else. You'll see this as slow response. I don't know how Autofs mounts default, and obviously I'm postulating here that this *may* be at the root of your problem. NFS works great for most home installations, and if it's going slow for you, my first idea is to check/change your configurations. So, going back to my last post, I'd suggest that you change the mount line in your client's /etc/fstab along the lines of the example I posted and see if that solves the problem. If yes, cool -- we all learned something. If no, bummer -- post back and we'll do more thinking. Good luck, -- Lan Barnes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Linux Guy, SCM Specialist 858-354-0616 -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
