9.0-RELEASE-p4 + NFS + ZFS = issues... :/ (probably a memory leak)

[Xavier Beaudouin]

Hi Rick,

(...)

 >> Issue is comming when copying from a netapp to this machine a 70G data
>> with bunch of big files (eg 600M ~ 8G) and web files.
>>
>> All NFS clients use NFSv3 and UDP.
>>
> There is this patch for NFSv3 over UDP:
>    http://people.freebsd.org/~rmacklem/udp-timer.patch
>    (It applies to both NFS clients, since it is krpc related.)
> I can't remember what the implications of not having this patch is, but
> if the client retries NFS RPCs too agressively, it could use a lot of
> DRC storage (mbuf clusters mainly) in the NFS server (if the NFS server
> is a FreeBSD box).
> OR
> Try the mounts using TCP and see if the problem goes away.

I will try this patch. :) TCP mount... gave me usualy lots of pain (but 
this is my own experience...) Is there really improovments with tcp ? :)


> If it is slow leak, doing "vmstat -z" and "vmstat -m" while the system
> is getting constipated might show what is leaking.

Will try this patch. Maybe this will fix it... I keep you in touch.

>> Tried :
>>
>> nfs client netapp and freebsd on the same machine : 1srt rsync from
>> netapp to freebsd ok : no issue, second rsync : memory leak, swap is
>> used (about less than 100Mb, but this trigger the bug.
>>
>> nfs client of the netapp is the "filer" machine, and the destination
>> is
>> local zfs spool. The rsync to make up to date data trigger as well the
>> issue.
>>
> I'll admit you lost me w.r.t. what is the NFS client and what is the
> NFS server. (Does "netapp" refer to a Netapp Filer or a FreeBSD box?)
> I'm not sure that matters, except that it isn't obvious to me if the
> leak you are referring to is in the NFS client or NFS server?

I was a bit unclear. Sorry :)

So let me rephrase :)

Scenario A :

Netapp server  -> FreeBSD 8.x NFS Client -> FreeBSD 9.0-p4 server w/ ZFS

Scenario B :
Netapp server -> FreeBSD 9.0-p4 server w/ ZFS as NFS client

I wanted on my own to remoce the part : the nfs server on freeBSD 9.0-p4 
is leaking memory.

Will try the udp patch and report.

Kind regards,
Xavier