Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!mike
From: mike@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Mike Elliot)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Another reason I hate NFS: Silent data loss!
Message-ID: <143244@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 23 Jun 91 00:22:45 GMT
References: <4339.Jun1501.31.5191@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1991Jun22.152801.9774@lemuria.MV.COM>
Organization: Ansoft Corp.
Lines: 23

In article <1991Jun22.152801.9774@lemuria.MV.COM> darryl@lemuria.UUCP (Darryl P. Wagoner) writes:
>In article <4339.Jun1501.31.5191@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
[description of circumstance deleted]
>>machine). The data loss was completely silent.
>
>The only time that I have seen this happen is when there was a bug in
>the NFS port or the server file system code.  Is this on Suns?  The
>only other thing I could think of is that the server has too many open
>files.  But this is just a SWAG!

Unfortunately, I have seen this all too often. We run a hetergenous net-
work of Apollo's, DEC's, HP's, IBM's, Sun's, etc. all running NFS. We
mount all of our file systems hard so that our software will only hang
when reading and writing across the network when things are slow instead
of just dieing. We have run this way for years without any problems.

Then we got in the IBM RS6000. Under AIX 3.1 (3001) NFS failed silently
at least 5% of the time. In fact it got so bad that we stopped running
on the IBM unless we were using the local disk. Then we upgraded to
AIX 3.1 (3005) and now NFS seems to fail 25% of the time, but at least
now it doesn't do it silently.

-mje