Hanging when trying to 'rm' files off a read-only NFS export? [7.2-R]

[Karl Pielorz]

--On 16 July 2009 13:49 +0000 stopeme <stopeme at gmail.com> wrote:

>> The reason for the shutdown hang is that '/etc/rc.d/random' rm's the
>> '/entropy' file if it exists as the system shuts down, and that rm
>> never returns (the error output is redirected so you never see the
>> errors) :(

> grep entropy | /etc/defaults/rc.conf
>
> entropy_file="/entropy"	# Set to NO to disable caching entropy through
> reboots.
> 			# /var/db/entropy-file is preferred if / is not avail.
> entropy_dir="/var/db/entropy" # Set to NO to disable caching entropy via
> cron.
> entropy_save_sz="2048"	# Size of the entropy cache files.
> entropy_save_num="8"	# Number of entropy cache files to save.
>
> move entropy file to rw fs - like /var or somewhere else

Already done that as a 'workaround' - but the underlying problem is that rm 
hangs... Surely it shouldn't hang?

Also the actual '/etc/rc.d/random' appears to have code designed to work 
around read-only root file systems, but that doesn't work in this case - it 
doesn't avoid the hang.

Touch doesn't hang, cp's don't hang, file redirection (e.g. 'echo "hello" 
>test') doesn't hang - infact everything I can think of doing write wise 
doesn't hang, except for rm?

The rm hangs for ever (left it for hours). If any other software, scripts, 
or anything on there attempts a similar operation - it'll lock up that 
process for eternity, that can't be right?


-Karl