# Gentoo with kernel 2.6.3-gentoo-r2 and NFS problems

## ssozonoff

Hi All,

I have a fresh install of Gentoo with a 2.6.3 kernel and when I mount an NFS share from a remote server I see this in my logs:

Mar  4 23:10:02 sui64 kernel: nfs warning: mount version older than kernel

mount --version gives mount-2.12

I have not found anything newer in portage? How can I fix this?

I also seem to have problems when doing large file transfers over NFS the data seems to go in bursts and in between the bursts on the this same server I see these entries in the log:

Mar  4 22:41:16 sui64 last message repeated 13 times

Mar  4 22:41:16 sui64 kernel: nfs: server nas OK

Mar  4 22:41:16 sui64 last message repeated 13 times

Mar  4 22:42:39 sui64 kernel: nfs: server nas not responding, still trying

I am not sure if this is related to the above.

Thoughts anyone.

Thanks,

Serge

----------

## ssozonoff

Hi All,

As a follow up to my previous post I have installed a 2.4 kernel on the exact same machine so that I now have the option to boot with a 2.6 and 2.4 kernel. I can confirm that:

a. I do not see the error message about mount being older version than kernel.

b. No problems or timeout during transfer of large files.

Basically the way I am testing this is using partimage to create an image of a 50Gig partition onto the NFS server.

An interesting thing I notices is that with the 2.4 kernel the transfer started off very quick and gradually slowed down and then seemed to stabilize at around 80% less than it started out. Obviously until I get NFS client working properly with the 2.6 kernel I do not have a reference for comparison.

Any input from kernel developer re. NFS client and 2.6 would be apreciated. I was hoping to start using 2.6 in a production environment.

This might be just a case of the portage NFS package being a little out of date?

Thanks,

Serge

----------

## Telamon

Just re-emerge the nfsutils package, so it will build against the new kernel.  That usually works for me (also, make sure /usr/src/linux points to your 2.6.x kernel sources.)

----------

## ssozonoff

Hi Telamon,

Thanks for this advice, funny enough I have re-emerged nfs-utils and I still get the following error 

Mar  6 10:14:07 my-gentoo kernel: nfs warning: mount version older than kernel

I tested this on another system which only has a 2.6 kernel so /usr/src/linux is cerainly pointing to the correct source.

I am not sure what is goin on here. One would have thought that re-compiling from source would have fixed the problem..... and NO, I am not emergeing with the -k option ...

Thanks,

Serge

----------

## chrysalis

Try this :

sysctl -w sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries=16

(or put sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries=16 in your /etc/sysctl.conf file).

And then restart your NFS daemons.

----------

## ssozonoff

Hi Chrysalis,

So this is something I do on the client side... right? in which case I have no NFS daemons to restart....

I have no control over the NFS server, its a NAS solution.

I will give this a try client side and see what happens.

Remeber that I am naively assuming this is a client side issue because when I test this with a 2.4 kernel on the NFS client I do not have the same problem, although I will admit that I am not experiencing as high of a throughput speed either. 2.6 seems f a s t until it something starts timing out.

Thanks,

Serge

----------

## ssozonoff

 *chrysalis wrote:*   

> Try this :
> 
> sysctl -w sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries=16
> 
> 

 

This does not seem to work.

my-gentoo root # sysctl -w sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries=16

error: 'sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries' is an unknown key

Again my kernel is :

my-gentoo root # uname -r

2.6.3-gentoo-r2

----------

## chrysalis

Sorry, this is for the latest mm kernel (2.6.4-rc1-mm2).

Do it on the client side, then restart portmap and remount your filesystems.

----------

## ssozonoff

Hi chrysalis thanks for the input,

OK, so installed the 2.6.4-rc1-mm2 kernel, ran 

sysctl -w sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries=16 

and restarted portmap.

I then tried my test again and got the same slow, burstlike behavior. The gap time between bursts could be up to a minute! See log extract below.

Any other thoughts?

Thanks,

Serge 

my-gentoo log # uname -r

2.6.4-rc1-mm2

Mar  7 16:31:04 my-gentoo kernel: nfs warning: mount version older than kernel

Mar  7 16:32:44 my-gentoo kernel: nfs: server nas not responding, still trying

Mar  7 16:32:54 my-gentoo last message repeated 12 times

Mar  7 16:32:55 my-gentoo kernel: nfs: server nas OK

Mar  7 16:32:55 my-gentoo last message repeated 12 times

Mar  7 16:34:23 my-gentoo kernel: nfs: server nas not responding, still trying

----------

## stonent

Hmm. I'm getting NFS problems with the same kernel. However the issues seem to be more time out related.  I was NFS mounting my /var/tmp directory as some packages get enormous during a compile and I otherwise wouldn't have enough room for them to compile.  Large packages eventually fail with Input/Output error followed by Illegal Seek.

My NFS server is a RH 7.2 system.

Oh, I also get the warning about the NFS tools like you do.

----------

## Kraymer

Hi there!

I also had some speed problems with nfs I couldn't explain. Threads in this forums didn*t help much.. But from then to now everything went to good just like this: Install 2.6.9-rc2! Really. I updated an outdated 2.6.6-kernel on my server-machine to this recent kernel and it helped. I'm using tcp mount option and get rates about almost 10MB/s which I couldn' dream of since months.

Hope that might help some of you or others who find this thread   :Very Happy: 

Sebastian

----------

