[wplug] nfs question.

[James O'Kane]

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, John 'el asesino del pollo' Harrold wrote:
> i have two computers: A and B. both of these computers export data and
> mount each others data. so A mounts B's stuff and B mounts A's stuff. now
> if i reboot one of the, say A, then it's ok. if i try to reboot B  at the
> same time, it hangs there trying to unmount the stuff on A. so i want to
> know if there is a way to prevent this?

Yes and no, I guess. This was one of my biggest pains at my last job. It 
is also annoying if you reinstall A and never bring it back when B has 
mountpoints associated with it.

The reason it hangs is that B wants to flush its buffers of any open file 
handles, possibly unwritten data, etc. So it waits for A to confirm their 
save. 

The easiest answer would be to tell you to umount A before you reboot it. 
:) The next best thing would be to use intr or soft as one of the mount 
options. I would recommend intr over soft, because I think soft can cause 
data loss at times other than just the case mentioned.

More details can be found at the official(?) linux nfs site: 
http://nfs.sourceforge.net/

Has anyone bought/read a recent version of the O'Reilly NFS and NIS book? 
I have a very old copy that I haven't bothered to read because I suspect 
it is completely out of date.

-james