slow logins with NFS

[Andrew Tridgell]

I have recently started using NFS under Ultrix 4.0 on a DS3100. We have
mounted 3 file systems from other machines but are not exporting any. The
problem I am finding is that logins become VERY slow when the network is
at all slow. In one case one of the hosts went down it took well
over 5 minutes to get a login prompt - the login process freezes until
just after the "last login from XXXX" comes up. Once I do get a login
it takes another 5 minutes to do a "su" as this effectively does another
login.
	This is my /etc/fstab file

/dev/rz1a:/:rw:1:1:ufs::
/dev/rz1g:/usr:rw:1:2:ufs::
/dev/rz1h:/u:rw:1:3:ufs::
/usr/sys at rsphy3:/usr/sys:ro:0:0:nfs:bg,soft:
/usr/share/decmips at csc2:/usr/share/decmips:ro:0:0:nfs:bg,soft:
/usr/share/common at sybil:/usr/share/common:ro:0:0:nfs:bg,soft:

why is it do slow? Can I set a short time out? Would using automount fix
this? I should note that I used "/usr/etc/svcsetup -o <order>" and tried
both "local" and "local,bind" with no luck. As soon as I dismounted the
offending file systems the problem was fixed. Unfortunately I have to
sit there for ten minutes to get a super user prompt in order to unmount
the things! Even when the other systems aren't down logins are terribly
slow at some times, which I guess is due to the network being slow at
those times.


Thanks for any help

---
Andrew Tridgell
tridge at aerodec.anu.edu.au