Re: NFS client problem with kernel 2.6 and SGI IRIX 6.5

From: James Pearson
Date: Mon Oct 17 2005 - 09:19:17 EST


The summary is as follows: I do have problems with the 2.6 series
kernel, which do not occur with a 2.4 series kernel (and an other-
wise unchanged system). I discovered it with Mathematica version 5.0,
but do think that other programs are also involved (e.g. OpenOffice
1.1.4, that doesn't find its default (or any other) printer any
longer). The symptom is, that certain ressources are reported
missing, that are definitively there and which lie somewhere
within the application-tree, that tree lying within a hierarchie
being nfs-auto-mounted from the SGI system to the (Intel architec-
ture) Linux client. File contents (or whole files?) seems to get
'lost' somehow.

It doesn't seem to be the MSBit Problem of the 32bit nfs cookies
(alone) - the branch is exported with the IRIX '32bitclients'
option, to avoid the 64bit cookies, that led to a similar problem
with the printer in OpenOffice under the 2.4 series kernels, and
vanished with the 32bit-option. The reason for me to state this
is, that when I applied a 32bit-'SGI-IRIX-induced'-patch for (early)
2.6 kernels (Debians 2.6.8) the problem didn't go away, and it also
still occurs when using the 2.6.12-kernel, where some kernel-version
ago (2.6.10 or 11?) that part of the cookie problem was solved via a
translation table (once and for all, I hope).

The problem occurs when requesting nfs v2 as well as nfs v3 protocol.
An LD_ASSUME_KERNEL does not seem to help, as it does with other
problems.

When testing or compiling kernels, I always used the 'debianized'
versions, but to my understanding, they are nearly unaltered compared
to the 'plain' kernels (see Debian changelogs).

The problem is severe to us, as the same configuration also exports
our home-directories, which are, of course, writeable, contrary to
the application-tree, which is read-only. Thus any help will be
welcome.

I'm willing to try whatever I can do to resolve the problem, but I
need guidance in what to do and what (else) you need to know.

Is this similar to the issue in the following thread? :

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=108741268200839&w=2

James Pearson
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