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From: grover@sed170.hac.com (Dean Grover (ird))
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: nfs over a "slow" network
Message-ID: <8901170510.AA15786@sed170.hac.com>
Date: 20 Jan 89 21:47:02 GMT
Sender: usenet@rice.edu
Organization: The Stepstone Corporation, Sandy Hook, CT
Lines: 19
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
Original-Date: Mon, 16 Jan 89 21:10:04 PST
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 114, message 7 of 18

I have a Sun 4/260 running 4.0 which mounts a directory from another Sun
4/260 (4.0) over a VERY slow network interface.  The problem: when I try
and copy a large file (1 Mb) to the NFS partition, I sometimes get
"timeout" errors.  The question: what is the best mount parameter to
change ?  Or will any of that help?  I have used "timeo=30" as a pure
random guess, and this seems to be ok.  My /etc/fstab entry looks like
this:

sun1:/usera /usera ... nfs rw,soft,bg,timeo=30 0 0

Our reasoning for using a soft mount is that we don't want our server to
hang it the other server goes down.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Dean Grover
Hughes Aircraft Company
grover@sed170.hac.com or
adgrover@hac2arpa.hac.com