nfsd 4, why, and how to tune...

[George Robbins]

In article <119 at janis.UUCP> ericw at janis.UUCP (Eric Wedaa) writes:
> 
> Does anyone have any ideas on how to tune the nfs daemon "nfsd".  I'm calling
> it with the recommended call (nfsd 4) but my server stil gets a bit slow
> when folks start doing makes across the net.  Any recommendations on how
> to come up with some standard performance figures so that I have some 
> way to reliably measure my changes?  Or am I just being overly sensitive to
> the users and their comments on performance?

There are two ways of "tuning" this situation.  One is to reduce the number
of NFS daemons, the other is to run the daemons in low priority, either by
starting them with "nice" or "renice'ing" them.  Either one presumably might
have a negative impact on NFS performance, expecially if the server is CPU
bound, but this doesn't seem to be a serious problem.

> The following was made this morning when the local system was relatively
> calm, and a series (6) of 'find / -name core -print' was being run on one of 
> the clients.

We have had this a happen here several times.  In our environment, it's not
too difficult to find the culprit and do a little "education".  In a student
or other environment, this might not be an effective solution.

I don't know if other NFS implementations show such a severe impact when
they are abused by their clients.

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,     uucp:   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing:   domain: grr at cbmvax.commodore.com
Commodore, Engineering Department     phone:  215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)