NFS error message

[Rick Stevens]

Waldher, Travis R wrote:
> I have a problem with Omniback not being able to enter a NFS file system
> to do backups.  It can access the other NFS mounted the other
> filesystems that are on the same NFS server as this one filesystem
> causing the issues.  My syslog, is showing these errors:
> 
> May  6 08:50:33 cfs3 kernel: NFS: short packet in readdir reply!
> May  6 09:00:33 cfs3 kernel: NFS: short packet in readdir reply!
> May  6 09:00:33 cfs3 kernel: NFS: short packet in readdir reply!
> 
> I can go in manually and all appears ok.  So.. Now I have NO idea what
> could cause that with ONLY Omniback.   If I use another system (HP/UX)
> to do the same thing.  It works just fine.

It may be the access speeds involved, Trav.  By default, NFS does its
thing using UDP.  Being a connectionless protocol, you can drop stuff
if the share or network is busy.  If you can, try mounting the suspect
NFS volume using TCP rather than UDP protocols.  In other words, add
"tcp" to the options in /etc/fstab so it looks sorta like this:

server:/share  /mountpoint  nfs \
rw,tcp,hard,noac,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,nfsvers=3      0 0

That one's a bit more involved, but you get the idea (that's how our
shared mail environment is mounted).
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-           "I understand Windows 2000 has a Y2K problem."           -
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