KDE hangs when peer on nfs network is offline

I’ve searched the forums for an answer, but can’t seem to find one, so I apologize if this is a stupid question. I have a couple of nfs shares which I configured through the yast NFS client module. It entered these in my fstab file to start on bootup. A sample entry is:

10.2.1.30:/home /opt/Cindy/home nfs defaults 0 0

As long as the foreign computer is online all is well. If the foreign computer is taken off line, soon after KDE applications such as Dolphin and the panel freeze, even if I am not using the shares. When the foreign computer comes online again, everything unfreezes on my computer and works fine. Likewise, if the other computer is not online when I boot, there is a long delay while the system waits for the share to come up. Is there something in my configuration that I can change to stop either or both of these problems? I am running 11.4 x86_64 on a wired network with static ip addresses.

Thanks.

Are you realy sure your are doing nothing within /opt/Cindy/home? Even when a prcocess has it only as his working directory you will have a problem.

I’m not doing anything with it, except that it does appear on the places panel at the left side of Dolphin. Dolphin doesn’t seem to give you the option to remove entries from that panel. It does let you hide them. I’ll try that and see what happens.

I think Dolphin shows partitions there, mounted or not. I am not sure if it sill “uses” them if it thinks it is mounted (after all, the sudden unresponsiveness of the fs is a major failure where those processes who are using it can not be blamed to much when they have recovery problems with that).

I am also not sure that if you remove the entry from that list (can be done with Right Click in that panel IIRC) that it also removes itself from the directory involved. It could simply hide the text without doing something realy important.

I would also say that “I’m not doing anything with it,” is not enough :slight_smile:
After all, it is not only “you”, but all users on the system and often one is not aware hat one has still a file open or is still standing inside a directory. I have seen system managers tearing their hair out because they could not unmount a file system on Unix because they differed wiith the system in the opinion that it was still in use. Needless to day, the system was allways corect.

And I am tearing my hear out ATM because there is a statement that tells you which is still in use by what process, but I forgot the name.

When that user (the only loged in user?) logs out and logs in again, is everythinmg then running OK? Or are you not even able to log out.

I do have an NFS mount on one system, but it never delays on boot when the other system is down. The entry is:

boven.henm.xs4all.nl:/home/wij    /home/wij    nfs    defaults    0 0 

Also keep in mind that while it must be possible imho to avoid the delay at boot, the suddenly removal of the contact with the fs “on the fly” can be disastrious anyhow. Freezing processes (while waiting for an I/O) is only minor. A file may e.g. be written half and thus become corrupt.

I’m almost certain the system is not using the share when the freeze happens. I opened a terminal window and then shutdown the other computer on which the shared directory resided. As expected, the panel and Dolphin froze. As before, I could use anything that was already open, however, such as the terminal window. In that window I used the umount command to unmount the share with no problem whatsoever which implies that nothing was using it. Immediately Dolphin and the panel unfroze. I was able to repeat this reliably, showing that the problem is with the nfs share. Since my fstab entry is the same as yours, there must be some other setting that is causing the freeze.

OK, new facts. Testing is allways teaching you things :wink:

The fact that you can still use an open Konsole (and unmount the remote file system) does mean that the system is not having any problems. I agree with you here.

It is Dolphin first and then the panel (I am a little bit in doubt what hanging means on the panel, I guess you can not use any of it’s functions anymore).
I do know that Dolphin watches available file systems (something it shouldn’t do IMHO, but that is a different discussion to be found in other threads). Maybe it is hanging therefore. Looks like a bug to me then. And I can not explain the blocked panel.

Not very satisfactory for you, I am afraid. Let us hope more people are lurcking around.

Yes, the panel is totally non-responsive - nothing happens if I click any of the icons, or right click on an empty space. If it helps, I’m running KDE 4.6.3 from the stable upstream release repository.

Is there any way to stop the boot time delay if the shared computer is not up?

Is there any way to stop the boot time delay if the shared computer is not up?

As stated earlier, I never experience this. I showed you allready the client site configuration (fstab) above. The server site is here:

boven:~ # cat /etc/exports
/home/wij       beneden.henm.xs4all.nl(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
boven:~ #

I think You could try the _netdev parameter. See here for reference :
mount.nfs before network

Best regards,
Greg

Oops, that is about the usage of Networkmanager. I completely forgot to ask if that is used (as I do not use it myself). And the OP did not tell IIRC.
That is one of many cases where assuming that the other knows what it is all about is wrong.

Yes, it is almost sure that the boot delay has something to do with the use of NM (where the network only starts when a users loges in vs. the network starting at boot).
And maybe your hangs are also caused by the use of NM.

Actually, I’m using IFUP with static IPs, not network manager.

Hrmpf! Again a brilliant idea that turns up to be a red herring.