NFS stalls

I have Ubuntu 7.10 computers in my network and 2 computers are set up as NFS servers.
Very often when I copy (cp) large files from NFS client to NFS server the client stalls ... same thing when I from the client copy large files between NFS servers.

What should I check to solve this problem ... BTW I have a couple of Windows XP computers in the network also and Windows do not have any problem to copy much larger files to the NFS servers (they act as Samba servers also)

I had the feeling that Linux was superior to Windows but ... I mean NFS has been around for ages so it should be rock-solid ...

Problems like this can be caused by any number of things: different CPU/RAM/HDD between the machines (one much slower than the other), different network medium (CAT5 vs. wireless), bad cabling, NIC/WLAN drivers, NFS/filesystem setup, etc.

The first place to look would be the /var/log/messages file on both machines.

You may also want to Google something like "nfs copy hang ubuntu" and you'll find some things like this.

Quote:

---

I had the feeling that Linux was superior to Windows but ... I mean NFS has been around for ages so it should be rock-solid ...

---

What's the point of this? If I need the best gaming platform, I'm probably going to run Windows - there is no "superior" platform in all respects. Like most *Nix programs, NFS is highly configurable and may need to be changed/tweaked for your environment/hardware. CIFS doesn't give you this amount of flexibility. Whether or not NFS/CIFS is "superior" for you will depend on your needs/environment - use whatever works for you and enjoy having multiple options.

Good Luck ;)

I agree with you that problems like this can be caused by any number of things.
Since I am in the beginning of Linux learning curve (migrated from Windows just recently) I would like to know how I can get information out of my Linux system to solve this problem. I checked the link ... could it be a packet size problem :???:

I ran
sudo ping -f -s 1024 neptun
and the server didn't loose any package:
--- neptun ping statistics ---
136323 packets transmitted, 136323 received, 0% packet loss, time 20964ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.073/0.098/0.884/0.012 ms, ipg/ewma 0.153/0.098 ms

My /etc/exports looks like:

/my_media_lib 192.168.1.44(rw,subtree_check,sync)

On my NFS-client (the one who dies) cat /var/log/messages | grep nfs gives:

Jan 6 04:45:09 pluto kernel: [16403.378139] nfs: server neptun not responding, still trying

And on my NFS server /var/log/messages gives:

Jan 6 06:14:03 neptun -- MARK --
Jan 6 06:34:03 neptun -- MARK --
Jan 6 06:54:03 neptun -- MARK --
Jan 6 07:14:03 neptun -- MARK --
Jan 6 07:34:03 neptun -- MARK --
Jan 6 07:36:20 neptun syslogd 1.4.1#21ubuntu3: restart.
Jan 6 07:54:03 neptun -- MARK --
Jan 6 08:14:03 neptun -- MARK --

How to interpret these messages ... why doesn't server respond ... there must be the reason why my client stalls and dies.
I also understand since I have a 2.6 kernel that NFS goes over TCP and not NFS over UDP ... is that an issue ?
If you need more output pls let me know.

Pls let me explain about Windows ... what I meant was that the reason I migrated from Windows to Linux was that I felt that Linux was superior than Windows in my eyes and for my purposes ... we do not run any games on our computers ... they are only for business :)