FC3 64bit <-> RHEL3-AS 32bit

[Alexander Lazarevich]

We've got two servers, one a FC3 64bit system with a 3.7TB filesystem on 
it. Works like a charm.

The other server is RHEL3-AS 32-bit. We nfs mount the 3.7TB filesystem 
onto this 32-bit 2.4 kernel server, our understanding being that since the 
nfs mount is a file handle and not block access to the disk, that the 
32-bit system (which normally cannot access any filesystem greater than 
2TB) should be able to read/write data to the nfs mounted filesystem no 
problem. However, we are starting to see some odd problems:

Let's say the 3.7TB filesystem is called /home/projects.

1) From FC3-64bit a 'du -sh /home/projects' completes fine. But a 'du -sh 
/home/projects' from the RHEL3-32bit dies with the following errors in the 
logs:

du: `/home/projects/xxx/xxx/xxx/xxx/xxx/xxx': Input/output error

But in fact, each time we run the du on the RHEL3-32bit system, the error 
catches on a different file; it's not the same files every time.

2) The nfs client is complaining that the NFS server on the FC3-64bit 
system is not there:

Apr 12 16:22:39 RHEL3-32bit kernel: nfs: server FC3-64bit not responding, 
timed out

But obviously it is there:

[root at RHEL3-32bit projects]# pwd
/home/projects
[root at RHEL3-32bit projects]# touch test
[root at RHEL3-32bit projects]# rm test
rm: remove regular empty file `test'? y
[root at RHEL3-32bit projects]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc11            3.9G  564M  3.1G  16% /
/dev/sdc1             145M   70M   68M  51% /boot
/dev/sdc3              20G  9.9G  8.5G  54% /itg
/dev/sdc10            3.9G  146M  3.6G   4% /opt
/dev/sdc5              20G   12G  7.1G  62% /os
none                  1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sdc12            2.0G   42M  1.8G   3% /tmp
/dev/sdc6             9.7G  3.8G  5.5G  41% /usr
/dev/sdc2              49G   11G   35G  24% /usr/local
/dev/sdc8             5.8G  868M  4.7G  16% /var
/dev/sdc7             7.7G  936M  6.4G  13% /var/spool/mail
/dev/sda1             1.8T  1.5T  288G  84% /home/users
/dev/sdb1             1.4T  429G  918G  32% /home/staff
RHEL3-32bit:/home/projects   3.5T  1.8T  1.7T  52% /home/projects

I'm just not sure if mounting the large 3.7TB filesystem onto a 32-bit 
machine is wise or not, and now that I'm seeing these errors, I'm 
wondering if I should keep it unmounted.

Does anyone here have a +2TB filesystem on a 64-bit system, which they 
mount and rw access from a 32-bit 2.4 kernel system?

Any ideas are appreciated,

Alex