Experimental NFS server oddity

[Tim Kientzle]

On Sep 11, 2010, at 5:26 PM, Rick Macklem wrote:
>> On Sep 11, 2010, at 4:20 PM, Rick Macklem wrote:
>> 
>>> You can also look in /var/log/messages to see if any of the daemons
>>> are complaining about something.
>> 
>> Only warning I see on a system reboot is:
>> nfsd: can't open /var/db/nfs-stablerestart
>> 
>> Creating this file and then rebooting the system seems to get things
>> working.
>> 
>> This file certainly wasn't required by the old nfsd.
>> Should this file be created by /etc/rc.d/nfsserver at boot time (if it
>> doesn't exist)?
>> Or should it be created by installworld?
>> 
> Technically, it should only be created for a fresh install on a disk
> that has never been set up before. (ie. Not on an update/upgrade
> unless it has never existed before.)
> ....
> As such, I just documented it in "man nfsv4" for now,

This is going to bite people on upgrades since
the old server didn't require this file, so people
upgrading from the old nfsd are going to hit
this problem pretty consistently.

I'd like to at least consider alternatives to the
current behavior; maybe one of the following?
 * If the file doesn't exist on startup, create it
   and warn loudly.
 * Similar to isc-dhcp, periodically make a
   a backup copy of the file and only create a
   fresh blank one if the file and backup are
   both missing.
 * "make installworld" is certainly capable
   of creating this file only if it doesn't already
   exist.  (That doesn't cover the binary
   update case, of course.)