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From: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Re: Forcing a umount
Keywords: nfs, umount, mount, fuser
Message-ID: <93325@sgi.sgi.com>
Date: 23 Mar 91 20:59:36 GMT
References: <118@gordius.gordian.com>
Sender: guest@sgi.sgi.com
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 28

In article <118@gordius.gordian.com>, johnk@gordian.com (John Kalucki) writes:
> 
> I'm having trouble arranging my nfs links to avoid halting all of
> my machines when one machine crashes....
> When one machine goes down, all others have difficulties, ranging
> from simply freezing up to having pwd(1) timeout....


Symbolic links from /{mach} to /mount/point could make the /{mach}/{mach}
mounting scheme palatable, since there are only 6 machines and 30-36
links involved.  Things change when you go from dozens to grosses....pun
possibly intended

The automounter sounds like a good bet for the situation described.  It's
reduced many of the dead host problems around here, where everyone has from
two to several dozen mounts, with many of the most used servers several
buildings, routers, and networks distant.  The automounter helps, because
you're more likely to get messed up only by the (network) crash of a
machine you currently care about.

Unfortunately the single thread nature of the automounter makes things
more painful when a server you care about does crash or become unreachable. 
The Sun automounter is not too smart about doing other mounts while it is
waiting to give up on a dead server.



Vernon Schryver,   vjs@sgi.com