Strangeness with NFS filesystems

[Scott Barman]

Over the weekend they took the power down in the building so we shut the
machines off.  Now that we are back up we are seeing a lot of strange
problems.  This is mostly happening on NFS filesystems but I've also
seen this on the root filesystem on our server.

[Systems: Server is a Sun 4/280, the other machine is a 4/110.  Both
 machines are running SunOS 4.1]

Our news patition is on a 4/110 (named gershwin) with a 300Mb disk that
is NFS mounted on the server (a 4/280).  So when I do a df I get the
following:

Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
. . .
gershwin:/news        276288  219370   29289    43%    /nbc/gershwin/news
                                                ^^

Obviously, the capacity IS NOT 43%!!
Other times (which I could not reproduce for this posting), I get
something like:

Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
. . .
gershwin:/news        276288  219370   29289349643%    /nbc/gershwin/news
                                            ^^^^^^

What ever the number is, it is not right!  Because this is the news
partition and I have been running doexpire to create some room for a
weekend's worth of news.  However, the second problem seems to be doing
wonders for spacefor.

I've rebooted both machines TWICE and I have been getting other assorted
news errors that make no sense.  Right now, spacefor echoes a "1"
because of this, but I would like to find out why I am getting other
errors.  We are not getting system related errors except for NFS
timeouts to OTHER NFS filesystems (those are connected to System V-based
systems, like Silicon Graphics).  The network seems to be OK since the
xterm I am typing this on is running the server and my keyboard is on
the 4/110 in question and with no problems.  And what gets me was that
all of this worked Friday before we powered down the system (which is
why I don't think it's the news software).

If anyone can point me in the right direction as to where to look, your
help would be appreciated.  Please send email since (obviously) we are
having problems with news!

-- 
scott barman			|           *** THIS SPACE FOR RENT ***
scott at nbc1.ge.com		| (I could give a commercial for NBC, still the
(This does not represent any	|  #1 network in television, but that would not
 opinions of NBC or affiliates)	|  fair to... never mind!  :-)