nfs locking broken

[Brian Candler]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 03:58:09PM +0100, Palle Girgensohn wrote:
> It seems that NFS locking is broken for the combo of 4.11 or 5.4 server and 
> 6.x client. Apps like eclipse and firefox fail to start with my home dir on 
> a 4.11 server and a 6.x client.

This in interesting to me - I'll explain why in a moment. But firstly, do
you have any evidence that this is an NFS locking issue? I thought (maybe
incorrectly) that FreeBSD did not implement NFS locking on the server side
at all, only as a client.

My issue is this. I used to use a noisy but fast 2.4GHz machine as my
general-purpose workstation - browsing, compiling etc. I have now moved this
onto a low-power passively-cooled machine (Mappit A4F) which is fantastic; I
can leave it on 24x7 and it doesn't make a whisper. However to have fast
compiling when needed, I decided to export /home from this box to the old
fast machine.

I thought that I should just be able to compile software as before, but some
makefiles just don't seem to work. The clocks on the two boxes are
synchronised, to within a second anyway. I haven't yet taken the time to
nail down what the problem exactly is though. Maybe it *is* relying on
locking somehow, directly or indirectly.

Regards,

Brian.