[K12OSN] NFS sync slow, async scary

Shawn Powers spowers at inlandlakes.org
Mon Jan 7 14:53:33 UTC 2008


After messing with my NFS server last week to get my thin clients to  
behave happily, my /home export to the main network, which connects  
to about 150 OSX machines was set with the "sync" option in /etc/ 
exports.

This seemed to make sense to me, but in practice (ie, today) the  
performance is so terribly slow that the OSX computers are unusable.   
After trying to weed out network issues (cheap switches do not make  
this easy), I tried changing the export to "async" -- and the OSX  
clients are all behaving magically delicious.

The problem, of course, is the threat of "doom and gloom" that goes  
along with exporting NFS with the async option.  I'm curious the  
ramifications that go along with doing such a thing, and I'm also  
curious what the "Right Thing" is to do.

UPDATE: I just got a call that the computers are not mostly  
complaining that file locking is working, but if they tell OSX to  
disable locks, things work again.  My suspicion is that I'm looking  
at quite a !fun day...

I realize the clients I'm referring to are not running Linux (those,  
in fact are working quite nicely), but I'm still interested in  
anyone's thoughts on the NFS thing...

Thanks,
-Shawn




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