automounter problems on a 4D/320VGX

[dixons%phvax.dnet at SMITHKLINE.COM]

luis at rice.edu writes
...
>        we have an iris 4d/320vgx w/ 64 megs of ram and 2G of disk space
>that is used as our main file server providing mail/nfs and yp
>services to a network personal iris and macs.  for the last several
>months the 320 has been hanging up periodically w/ a failure interval
>of between 2 hours to 13 days.  the technical support people at SGI
>blame the automounter for observed behavior.
...

Yes, this is a known problem with multiprocessor 4D machines.  We see the
same problem on our 4D/380s.  We have had some long talks with SGI tech
support with the result that there is no fix currently.  It is a kernel
problem which affects both automounter and AMD.  SGI claims that Version
4.0 will fix the problem.  Until then, the problem usually doesn't occur
that often for us so we are just living with it.
Scott Dixon (dixons at smithkline.com)