Major NFS problems with mail spool and writing

[Adam Majer <adamm@galacticasoftware.com>]

Hi all,

For some reason my server/client connection for nfs seems very flaky.
Well, at least  lately.


The problem is as follows:

1. I run mutt which reads the spool fine
2. Deleting all messages from the spool works
3. If the spool changes so that it has to be updated, most of the time
NFS freezes solid. The error messages are:
  - NFS server not responding....
  - task cannot allocate request slot...
  - NFS server OK...
    but still not working!

mutt is stuck on Commiting changes....


I also mount ~/Mail directory, but that one seems to work quite 
nice and NFS never froze on that dir. 

Does anyone know what is the deal here? 


Thanks in advance,
- Adam

PS. Many times I see a lock file in the spool directory
that I cannot remove or removing it doesn't do anything.
mutt also times out trying to get fnctl lock on the server
(when I try to access the spool on the server) when 
the client is frozen trying to "Commit changes" for five years.


I'm running nfs-kernel-server with v3 in the 2.4.18 kernel on
the server. The client has 2.4.18 and both versions v2 and v3
mess up the same way. And it is _always_ and _only_ the spool!


And for some stupid reason, I _always_ have to restart nfs-common
and then nfs-kernel-server (in /etc/init.d) for the client to
even mount over NFS - if I don't do that I just get
'server not responding.. Still trying.'

Any ideas?


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-request@lists.debian.org 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org