NFS locking between 8.3-STABLE (jan 2013) and 9.2-BETA2 -- Firefox SQLite locking issue

[Rick Macklem]

John Reynolds wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I've been recently building up a new Haswell box and after overcoming
> several problems have gotten things to mostly work. But I got stuck
> when
> trying to use Firefox 22. The bookmarks editor/container was always
> coming up empty and I was not able to import bookmarks I had from a
> saved profile. Additionally, the back/forward arrow buttons would not
> work. They were always grayed out making navigation impossible and
> thus
> rendering the browser fairly useless.
> 
> I tried linux-firefox and the SAME problems existed. This led me to
> believe it wasn't a port problem. I saw mention after searching and
> searching for an answer of somebody who moved their account's $HOME
> dir
> from an NFS mounted volume to a local disk and some other problem
> they
> had went away. I thought "oh, this has got to be a locking problem."
> So,
> I tried this and Firefox 22 works perfectly on local disk! It's got
> to
> be the SQLite that FF22 uses for the "places.sqlite" and other SQL
> databases (bookmarks, etc.) and a locking issue since I have my $HOME
> directory mounted over NFS.
> 
> My setup:
> 
> NFS server: FreeBSD 8.3-STABLE as of Jan 2013
> nfs_server_enable="YES"
> nfs_server_flags="-u -t -n 4"
> nfsv4_server_enable="NO"
> rpc_lockd_enable="YES"
> rpc_statd_enable="YES"
> 
> I am not knowingly running any other version of NFS server/client
> other
> than what any user would get by "default" (supposing NFSv3).
> 
> NFS client: FreeBSD 9.2-BETA2 (I've been tracking sources and
> updating
> through buildworld, etc.)
> Just using normal "nfs" options when mounting the homedir directory
> on
> the client.
> 
> So, questions:
>   - I haven't upgraded the server to 9.x. I plan to do that along
>   with
> new faster hardware, but since I have multiple "users" in the house,
> I
> have to have some dedicated time to work, research, plan, and pray
> things don't go wrong before I black-out the gateway/firewall/nat/etc
> box for all these "users" :). When I upgrade so that server is
> relatively equal to client (at least same 9.x version) should I see
> locking problems like the above? i.e. somebody else on this list HAS
> to
> be using NFS to serve up home directories. Do you see locking
> problems
> like that mentioned above?
>   - I saw many posts talking about moving things to NFSv4 to resolve
> locking problems. If I was to upgrade the server to the latest
> 8.x-STABLE kernel/world should this interact with a 9.x world
> properly
> using NFSv4? Is the NFSv4 server in 8.x-STABLE "good enough" in this
> regard?
Yes, I believe that a current stable/8.x NFSv4 server will work ok.

>   - Without having to upgrade either my server or change to NFSv4
>   across
> the board, what other options might there be?
Unless multiple clients share the same files concurrently that must be
locked (not likely for home dir stuff), the "nolockd" mount option on
the client will avoid having to use rpc.lockd and rpc.statd. (With this
mount option, the locks are visible to all processes in the client,
but not to other clients accessing the same file.)

> The older hardware for
> this machine was running relatively the same kernel as my
> server--8.3-STABLE and I DID NOT SEE this behavior--which l leads me
> to
> believe that it is an 8.x <-> 9.x issue. Is there anybody out there
> besides me mixing these versions or am I the only person the planet
> that
> hasn't upgraded to 9-stable? :)
>   - I see bits and pieces of documentation talking about how to use
> NFSv4, but I didn't see anything in the Handbook or out there in the
> wild that was a guide on how to migrate one's setup/config files. If
> there are good howto's or other articles on this please share!
> 
About all you need to do is add a "V4: ..." line to your /etc/exports
and then set nfsv4_server_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf and reboot.
On the client mount, you need to add "nfsv4" as a mount option.

> Thanks in advance for all answers. I appreciate the dedication that
> you
> all have!
> 
> -Jr
> 
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