On Sep 20, 2007, at 6:58 PM, Matty wrote: > Howdy, > > I have a question for the NFS gurus on the list. We have a number of > Solaris and Linux NFS clients that need to know when a file on a > server changes. Currently they are issuing stat() calls to determine > this, which means we are issuing thousands of NFS operations to > determine if a given file has changed. Is anyone aware of a method > that would allow the server to notify the client when a file changes > (i.e., is there a file events notification facility for NFS)? I > perused the NFSv4 RFC to see if a file event notification facility > existed, but I didn't see anything that would do what I wanted (If I > missed it, please let me know. I will wander off to read).
NFSv4.1's directory delegations and notifications is what you would like to have. Directory delegations will take care of the first order effect of having the client poll via GETATTR for changes. If there are specific files of interest then notifications can be more targeted. Although notifications are asynchronous, they will not be "any worse" than the current polling mechanism in regards to timeliness but will significantly reduce overhead throughout. Spencer
