Improving FreeBSD NFS performance (esp. directory updates)

Marc Wiz marc at wiz.com
Thu May 29 14:05:06 PDT 2003


On Thu, May 29, 2003 at 04:54:00PM -0400, Tom Limoncelli wrote:
> I have a NFS server with (so far) a single NFS client.  Things work 
> fine, however if (on the client) I do an "rm -rf foo" on a large (deep 
> and wide) directory tree the tty receives "NFS server not 
> responding"/"NFS server ok" messages.
> 
> I don't think the network is at fault, nor is the server really going 
> away.  I think the client is just impatient.  Is there a way to speed 
> up a large "rm -rf"?  I have soft-writes enabled but alas....

Tom,

please reproduce the problem but before doing it run the following commands
and save the output:

On the client:

nfsstat -c
netstat -m
netstat -s

On the server:

nfsstat -s
netstat -m
netstat -s

Run the rm -rf /foo

Rerun the above commands on both the client and server and of course
save the output again :-)

RTFM-ing for nfsstat I am disappointed that nfsstat does not have -z 
option for zeroing out the counters.  Time to look at the source :-)

Marc (who in a former life and now current life is doing NFS support)
-- 
Marc Wiz
marc at wiz.com
Yes, that really is my last name.


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