: PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
: 1 ? S 0:03 init [5]
: 2 ? SW 0:00 (kflushd)
: 3 ? SW< 0:00 (kswapd)
: 4 ? SW 0:00 (nfsiod)
: 5 ? SW 0:00 (nfsiod)
: 6 ? SW 0:00 (nfsiod)
: 7 ? SW 0:00 (nfsiod)
Well, nfsiod is part of the new (fixed) NFS client code. You may initially
see it as 4 copies of something like:
insmod -x -o nfs /lib/modules/1.3.86/nfs.o
What nfsiod does (according to the comments in the kernel source) is to handle
sending asynchronous RPC calls, thus meaning that the system is in kernel code
(interrupt handlers) for much less of the time during NFS requests, thus there
is a general speed improvement when using NFS (which will become especially
noticable on SMP systems, as the old code would have blocked ALL kernel
requests, from any processor until the send was complete).
However, the VFAT problem appears more serious. I don't know what causes this,
but have you tried using an earlier kernel with VFAT. When I used to use VFAT
back with 1.3.60-ish, it worked perfectly. You might want to try finding out
what change causes this behaviour.
-- Tom Lees <tom@lpsg.demon.co.uk>Conway's Law: In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on.
This person must be fired.