RFC: new NFS mount option to work around Solaris server bug

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

On Wed, Dec 24, 2014 at 3:14 PM, Rick Macklem <rmacklem at uoguelph.ca> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=193128
>
> This bug report discusses a bug in the Solaris NFS server
> that is tickled by the way FreeBSD currently does exclusive
> open in the NFS client.
> FreeBSD sets both the mtime to the time of the client and
> also the file's mode using a Setattr RPC done after an
> exclusive create of the file in an exclusive open.
>
> Jason (jnaughto at ee.ryerson.ca) was able to figure out that
> the server bug can be avoided if the mtime is set to the
> server's time (xxx_TOSERVER option in the Setattr RPC request).
>
> I'd like to propose a new mount option that forces the
> FreeBSD client to use xxx_TOSERVER for setting times,
> mostly to be used as a work around for this Solaris server bug.
> 1 - Does doing this make sense to others?
> 2 - If the answer to one is "Yes", then what do you think
>     the option should be called?
>     useservertime
>     useservtm
>     ust
>     OR ??
>
> Thanks in advance for your comments, rick
>



Actually , this parameter should be defined ALSO in NFS server in rc.conf
definition , because , to the NFS server , many different client operating
systems may be connected . Setting a parameter in only FreeBSD clients will
not solve COMMON time usage problem , because any change in FreeBSD client
will not be available in other operating system client definitions .

In that way , NFS server will set the file time irrespective of client time
.

If this causes an inconvenience in other operating system clients , they
may use an NTP server defined in the NFS server but , unfortunately , it
seems that a FreeBSD server is NOT able to be used as an NTP server with
respect to FreeBSD Handbook 29.11. Clock Synchronization with NTP where it
seems that ntpd is only a CLIENT to an external NTP server .

At this point , it seems that there is a necessity to enable FreeBSD to
define an NTP server by itself like an NFS server .


Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk