NFS problem FreeBSD vs NetApp Filer using tomcat / java

[Oliver Fromme]

Hi,

Is this the right list for NFS problems?  If it's not, then
where would this be most appropriate?  Thanks!

We're running java + tomcat on a Compaq DL320 server.  The
software runs chrooted on an NFS volume that comes from a
NetApp Filer, i.e. _everything_ comes via NFS (binaries,
libs, data).

Every few hours, the java process dies, and we get the
following in the logs:

Jul  9 08:23:38 tbox /kernel: nfs_getpages: error 4
Jul  9 08:23:38 tbox /kernel: vm_fault: pager read error, pid 60443 (java)
Jul  9 08:23:38 tbox /kernel: pid 60443 (java), uid 0: exited on signal 6

(errno 4 is "interrupted system call", sig 6 is SIGABRT.)

It doesn't seem to be a load problem, as the machine does
not have a particularly high load (neither CPU nor network).
We're running 4.8-Release, the mounts are NFSv3/UDP.

As far as I can tell, there are no network problems.  The
server has intel fxp FastEthernet cards, the Filer even has
Gigabit interfaces.  They're connected with Cisco switches,
ping RTTs are < 0.2ms.  There's one special thing that we
use a VLAN trunk to the server, so the NFS mounts are on
virtual vlan interfaces, but I think that shouldn't be
causing the above problem.

I suspect it's a bug in FreeBSD's NFS implementation which
occurs under certain conditions against a NetApp filer.
But I'm not an NFS guru.

Does anybody have an idea what to do?  Or how to debug the
problem further?  If this cannot be resolved, the machine
will be converted to Debian Linux.  I'd prefer to avoid
that.

Thanks in advance!

Regards
   Oliver

PS:  Yes, I did search the archives, but no luck.

-- 
Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co KG, Oettingenstr. 2, 80538 München
Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author
and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.

"All that we see or seem is just a dream within a dream" (E. A. Poe)