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From: scj@casux4.uucp (Steve Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: 3B2/600 questions
Keywords: RFS
Message-ID: <18366@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 23 Nov 89 16:10:39 GMT
References: <367@ai.etl.army.mil> <1989Nov15.155346.25197@eci386.uucp> <1262@atha.AthabascaU.CA> <1989Nov22.162738.10433@chinet.chi.il.us>
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Reply-To: scj@navaho.cc.bellcore.com (Steve Johnson)
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Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc.
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In article <1989Nov22.162738.10433@chinet.chi.il.us> les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
...
>If your machines crash often enough to be a problem maybe you *should*
>replace them...
>

Except that when WE run RFS between machines that COEXIST with MANY other
(non-AT&T, heterogenous) machines on the same ethernet LAN, *crashes* of
our machines are often related to RFS crashes.  It seems that packets NOT
destined for RFS or even our boxes *somehow* cripple our (nearly new,
current software) 3B2/(600,700,1000*) machines into panic'ing (stream
resource related panics).  Tuning is not an issue (for instance, /etc/crash
shows no failures for strstat, no other errors either, either from crash
or other daemons and logs).

>Anyway, you should not have to restart RFS because any single node
>goes away.

Agreed, you *should* not have to restart.  But, on the same LAN as
mentioned above, *with* a secondary properly defined, our entire RFS
network often comes down, HARD, when the primary server RFS crashes. 
Additionally, ( serious, but we are :-) with RFS OVERALL) we often have
to REBOOT the primary server after an RFS crash to gain any RFS sanity.

Tests done in *isolation* from the rest of our normal LAN neighbors show
*near complete* RFS stability.  We believe that RFS *just cannot cope*
with the MANY protocols and other network traffic on the LAN.  Storms
are sometimes, but not always an issue here.

I really do like the overall stability of AT&T 3B2 products, both
hardware and software, but in case some offense is taken, I'm
putting on asbestos shorts! ;-)

Bye!