[Bug 879334] Re: nfsd from nfs-kernel-server very slow and system load from 25%-100% from nfsd

[Karsten Suehring]

I did some testing with a newer kernel on Debian a while ago. The 3.x
series seemed to have higher load indeed, but as far as I could test, it
did not kill the server. If you have multiple clients to the server it
would be a good test to start several writes (like dd from /dev/random)
over NFS and see if the server can handle that. It did not many writes
to completely kill my server on 12.04.

It would be good news to hear that just by upgrading to newer kernel
versions in later releases this issue would be resolved even without
Ubuntu proactively working on a fix. But it will still remain an issue
in the "Long term support" release 12.04.

My bottom line here is that Ubuntu is apparently caring more about
mobile phones now than servers which is especially unfortunate after
many people finally talked Dell into more support for Ubuntu. I did not
even get a reply from the Ubuntu sales department (except for an
automatic reply which promised to do so within two days) when we offered
to pay for resolving the issue...

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Title:
  nfsd from nfs-kernel-server very slow and system load from 25%-100%
  from nfsd

Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete
Status in “nfs-utils” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in “linux” package in Debian:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  I have a diskless ubuntu 10.10 machine which I boot regularly using
  pxe-boot from another ubuntu machine where I have the root filesystem
  of the diskless machine exported over nfs.

  I set it up about a year ago using 10.10. In the mean while the server
  machine got upgraded to 11.04 and as of yesterday to 11.10.

  After the upgrade to 11.10 the diskless machine is dead slow (most of
  the times it wont even boot completely) and the load on the server
  machine is high (25%-100% as shown from top). If in the middle of the
  diskless computer booting I do a restart of the nfs server, the client
  computer proceeds with the boot a bit more and then it gets stuck
  again. I have to restart and nfs-server 3-4 times in order to get the
  gdm login screen at the client machine

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
  Package: nfs-kernel-server 1:1.2.4-1ubuntu2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.20-generic 3.0.4
  Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic i686
  ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu3
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Fri Oct 21 12:53:02 2011
  ProcEnviron:
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: nfs-utils
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-20 (1 days ago)

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