NFS and lost connections

[Christopher Houdeshell]

	Classic case of NFS hard mounting. Basically, the NFS client is
waiting for the RPC call to complete. Since there is no NFS server anymore -
the client hangs forever. The only way to stop the hang is to kill the
process that started the RPC call. 
	Look into NFS soft mounting. It is the same, except for if the
server goes down, the NFS RPC timesout and tries again till `retrans` max is
hit..if this is hit, it returns an error and all is well. No Hangs.

-----Original Message-----
From: ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
[mailto:ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Colin Brace
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 12:53 PM
To: Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions
Subject: NFS and lost connections

Hi all,

I customarily mount several (W)LAN NFS shares on my laptop running
Ubuntu (7.10). I try to remember to close any open files and manually
dismount them when I take the laptop off the LAN, but sometimes I
forgot, or the cable falls out, or, if I am using wireless, the
connection momentarily falters. In such cases, something trashes the
system. I can't unmount and remount the NFS shares; nautilus no longer
works, nor do the open file dialogs in my gnome apps, presumably
because I have the NFS mounts bookmarked.

I try restarting NFS, networking, udev, HAL, dbus, X, anything else I
can think of to no avail. The only remedy is to reboot.

The problem seems to arise in particular when files are open on the
NFS shares or a share is opened in a nautilus window. If this isn't
the case, usually I can umount and remount the share without further
problems.

I seem to recall earlier versions of Ubuntu being more forgiving about
lost NFS mounts. In 7.10, some subsystem is getting hosed, but I can't
figure out which one, hence I am reluctant to open a bug report.

Any ideas?

-- 
  Colin Brace
  Amsterdam

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