NFS file sharing causing system hangs

[Glen Gray <glen@lincor.com>]

Hey Guys,

I know you all know about the current crop of network issues with the
current kernel build. Using ftp sources for apt, I managed to get my
machine setup (simply doing an "/etc/init.d/networking restart" from the
command prompt provided by the installer does the trick by the way, and
ftp downloads pick up where they left off). I also managed to get back
to an older version of the kernel by using the link in the release notes
to kernel version
kernel-image-2.4.27-r5k-cobalt_2.4.27-8.040815-1_mipsel.deb

This version seemed to be fine and it allowed me to get the rest of the
system setup ok.

However I've been having lockups on the box when there's any kind of
heavy network load. I recently had to replace the power supply and hdd
on this Qube2. It was acting as a file server here in the office. But
upon trying to upload backed up content to the box via NFS it seems to
crash out.

Also, I managed to get some FC4 iso's hosted on it's NFS share, and
doing a network install against those shared image files crashed the box
repeatedly too.

I doubt it's the network bug being seen in the latest version of the
kernel as simply doing and ifdown and ifup on the ethernet device would
bring the network back. This seems to hang the box, possibly a bug in
the NFS version on MIPS ?

I'll try using nfs-user-server and see if that's any better. I'll also
try using ssh/rsync to get data to the box and see if that works okay.
Wondering if anyone else is seeing this.

Regards,
-- 
Glen Gray <glen@lincor.com>              Digital Depot, Thomas Street
Senior Software Engineer                            Dublin 8, Ireland
Lincor Solutions Ltd.                          Ph: +353 (0) 1 4893682