OSX NFS-Server && FreeBSD NFS Client

[Konrad Heuer]

I observe a serious problem with NFS exports from a Mac OS X 10.4 server 
to FreeBSD 6.2 NFS clients (itself running on DELL PowerEdge 2850 server 
hardware).

We use the StorNext distributed file system in which FreeBSD cannot 
participate straightly (sorry to say). But OS X can do using the XSAN 
software from Apple, so we integrated the OS X server into the StorNext 
environment.

We want OS X to NFS export the filesystems to FreeBSD clients, which by 
itself for example act as SMB servers using Samba 3.0.x.

After exporting and mounting, everything seems to work well. But when the 
system gets under some real life load, NFS-mounted file systems begin 
sporadically to hang on the FreeBSD clients without any error message.

On the NFS clients, although some processes are blocked in kernel mode 
when accessing files, others still can work successfully. But with 
increasing time, the situation becomes worse and worse until we have to 
restart the operating system by ungently switching the power off and on 
again.

The OS X server seems to be unimpressed by all this.

I'd greatly appreciate any hint or idea what to do. Of course, I did some 
experimenting with NFS mount options (-r<size>,-w<size>,-L), but got no 
improvement.

Best regards

Konrad Heuer
GWDG, Am Fassberg, 37077 Goettingen, Germany, kheuer2 at gwdg.de