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From: dwh@twg-ap.UUCP (Dave Hamaker)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Re: login hangs when server dies
Message-ID: <366@twg-ap.UUCP>
Date: 5 Oct 89 17:45:56 GMT
References: <1989Sep28.195215.4656@tubsibr.uucp>
Organization: The Wollongong Group, Palo Alto, CA.
Lines: 23

From article <1989Sep28.195215.4656@tubsibr.uucp>, by petri (Stefan Petri):
> 
> Configuration : Targon/35-M50 with TOS3.2 and NFS3.2
> 	(thats a clone of Pyramid 9810 OSx4.0 , I think)
> 	linked via ethernet to some Sun3/60 (SunOs 3.5 and 4.0.3)
> 
> Problem: when a nfs-servers dies, the `login' on all of his
> clients will hang somewhere after displaying /etc/motd (saying nfs-server gargel
> not responding, still trying) ; even if neither the user
> nor the system needs (seems to need ? ) the files from that died
> server. ( e.g. remote-mounted man-pages).

You might look at your shell profile file(s).  The default /etc/profile on my
system did a ". /etc/dfspace" just before printing /etc/motd.  /etc/dfspace
is a shell script which edits the output of df -t with awk to tell you about
available disk space.  It wasn't written with NFS in mind but turns out to
ignore mounted NFS filesystems which df reports.  When I changed the dfspace
reference to report specifically on my normal local filesystems (e.g.
". /etc/dfspace" -> "/etc/dfspace / /usr", login hanging ceased.

Dave Hamaker
The Wollongong Group
dwh@twg.com