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From: kyle@xanth.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: NFS and EWOULDBLOCK (why not?)
Message-ID: <1446@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Jun-87 17:52:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: xanth.1446
Posted: Sun Jun 28 17:52:43 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Jun-87 04:31:33 EDT
Lines: 10

Currently if a user cd's to a directory on an NFS filesystem that is mounted
on a machine which is down, the user and his terminal are hung.  The shell
cannot be killed because the it is in 'disk' wait and thus sleeping at too
high a priority to receive signals.  Thus we have a process that is blocked
potentially for hours in what is supposed to be a short term wait state.

Why can't the relevant system calls that can be blocked by an overloaded or
dead NFS server return -1, with errno == EWOULDBLOCK?

kyle jones   <kyle@xanth.cs.odu.edu>   old dominion university, norfolk, va