NFSv2 problem? initctl problem?

[Markus Törnqvist]

On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 02:56:47PM +0200, Bernd Schubert wrote:
>> But is it usual for knfsd with v2 to get stuck on /dev/initctl?
>It shouldn't, which kernel version is it? As far as I know there's a bug in 
>2.6.X related to this. Neil Brown posted a patch for this on LKML a week or 
>two weeks ago.

The server has 2.4.18-bf24 and the client 2.4.24-fai.
Nothing out of the ordinary and I would believe that standard-issue
kernels should work...

>> For the record, I also tried sync instead of async and with taking away
>> devfs=nomount...
>But the devices are created from devfsd, right? When devfsd is not running 
>yet, this won't help.

But devfs=nomount is the way to go, still, just for that reason.
The NFS export contains the device nodes.

>you want to know more:
>http://www.pci.uni-heidelberg.de/tc/usr/bernd/downloads/nfs-root-howto/diskless-nfs-howto.txt

Thanks.
I looked it through and actually may give it some thought.

The thing is, this project just got shelved for a while, I am to install
that one machine from a CD and continue fighting with FAI later :P

>There's also an initrd available, for 2.6. we use udev, since either the 
>nfs-kernel client or the udev scripts have a bug, we first mount tmpfs 
>to /dev, untar some initial devices. Later on undev overmount /dev again with 
>another tmpfs. If you would do the same with devfs, it should also work.

Mmmyeah. I assume these?
http://www.pci.uni-heidelberg.de/tc/usr/bernd/downloads/nfs-root-howto/initrd/

I'm also giving SHFS some pretty serious thought.
It might be possible to have an initrd image, mounted as root, which
then proceeds onward with FAI.

Or migrating the systems to 2.6.8.1 or something...

>> From what I've gathered, getattr is just a side-effect of doing something
>> else, but NFS doesn't say what it's doing to a file. Does FAI or something
>As I said, I have no experience with FAI.

Sure. It would just be nice if NFS had some way of saying why, or how,
it's taking a getattr :)

>PS: Why don't you use knoppix on one of your clients to see if you can mount 
>the directory from knoppix?

That's not a bad idea. I should give it a shot.

-- 
mjt