# NFS mount: Server not responding; still trying

## VinzC

Hi.

I've setup NFS V3 on my Gentoo server and I'm trying to use NFS client-side on another Gentoo machine. I keep getting warning messages on the NFS client when I'm playing MP3 files, for example, on the client using audacity:

```
nfs: server athena not responding, still trying

nfs: server athena OK

nfs: server athena not responding, still trying

nfs: server athena not responding, still trying

nfs: server athena not responding, still trying

nfs: server athena OK

nfs: server athena OK

nfs: server athena OK
```

Reading MP3 files through the network should produce a high bandwidth usage, right? So IMHO the problem shouldn't relate to network saturation - there are only two machines on the network: the server and the client.

I usually mount with the following command:

```
mount athena:/nsf/mountpoint /media/nfs/mountpoint
```

I've seen in this forum a post from someone who solved that kind of issue by running the following command:

```
mount -o nfsvers=3,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 athena:/nsf/mountpoint /media/nfs/mountpoint
```

It's a little bit better but doesn't fix the problem definitely. So I've tried

```
mount -o nfsvers=3 athena:/nsf/mountpoint /media/nfs/mountpoint
```

no change compared against the previous mount command.

The NFS client machine has a Marvell network adapter, which is known to drop packets and to cause network problems but I've installed the driver from Marvell and I don't experience connection drops ever since. Most of all I usually have errors in the log when the connection drops and in this case I have no such message, only those from NFS client.

Any idea on how I can troubleshoot this issue?

Thanks in advance.

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## VinzC

 *VinzC wrote:*   

> The NFS client machine has a Marvell network adapter, which is known to drop packets and to cause network problems but I've installed the driver from Marvell and I don't experience connection drops ever since.

 

It looks like connection drops are not logged by Marvell's driver. Drops do occur indeed. The cure is probably, like many people did, to plug in a good old Realtek or 3Com network card.  :Sad: 

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