nfsd problems with FreeBSD 5.2.1
Mike Thomas
mwt at cems.umn.edu
Fri Jul 16 12:02:48 PDT 2004
Eric,
It's not a dell, its a 1U box from Sun with x86 hardware, I believe the
model on it is V60x, but no, I haven't tired turning off hyperthreading,
that's one thing I am about to do. I have backed out from 5.2-current to
RELENG_5_2 to go back to 5.2.1-release and I'm going to see if that
helps at all.
--Mike
> Oh - and also - have you tried turning off hyperthreading? is this a
> Dell by any chance?
>
>
> Mike Thomas wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Alright folks, I'm in some serious need for help/advice.
>>
>> I'm running FreeBSD 5.2.1 (-current) with a kernel/buildworld ran
>> yesterday (7/16/2004) on a Dual Xeon 3.06ghz with hyperthreading
>> enabled. The machine also has 2gb of ram and a scsi raided array with
>> an intel storage raid array controller. (iir0)
>>
>> The machine functions as a nis client for accounts with home
>> directories nfs mounted from a Solaris 9 machine. It's primary
>> function is as a mail server, and what it is nfs sharing out is the
>> spool folder. (/var/mail, in this case).
>>
>> I know all about the dangers of sharing out a mail spool, I don't
>> need, or want, a lecture about proper operating procedures in this
>> case. It's for legacy purposes and will be going away in due time.
>> Anyway, its with this mount that I am experiencing these nfs problems.
>>
>> Now, to the nitty gritty. I am seeing periodic spikes from one of the
>> nfsd children from about 10% of the cpu (via top) to 100% of the cpu.
>> During times of this spike, even if the spike only reaches 40-50% of
>> the cpu, the machine becomes dibilitatingly slow and stops responding
>> to all other commands. Even issuing an 'ls' is difficult, let alone
>> doing anything productive. While using top, the nfsd state will
>> alternate between biowr, biord, *Giant (yeah, it even is requesting
>> Giant locks). I have recompiled every single ounce of software that
>> operates on /var/mail to only use fcntl locking
>> (procmail/postfix/uw-imap (there's a patch by redhat to do that)) so
>> that it is nfs friendly.
>>
>> Here's what I've tried to do to see if it made any difference. First,
>> all mounts of /var/mail from other servers were using UDP, they have
>> all been switched to tcp with a rsize and wsize of 1024. I've tried
>> 4096, and 8192, both which make no difference. All clients are
>> specifically forced to use NFSv3. I have also tried varying between a
>> soft and hard mount, also, with no difference in these spikes.
>>
>> I also tried switching back to the 4BSD scheduler, to see if that
>> might have beeen the issue, but it would appear that didn't make any
>> difference as well, though the max load average I was seeing stayed a
>> bit lower with ULE as upposed to the 4BSD scheduler.
>>
>> So, I'm really at the end of my rope right now, I have no idea what
>> to do or what could be causing this. Any advice would be great, thanks.
>>
>> --Mike
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>
>
>
>
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