NFS causes mail loss and other nasties

John Goerzen (jgoerzen@complete.org)
Sun, 31 Jan 1999 00:33:18 -0600


Hi,

This problem appeared in 2.1.x; it disappared briefly somewhere between
2.1.132 and 2.2.0-final, but is now back in 2.2.1. My NFS client machine is
a 2.2.1-based Alpha, the server is a 2.0.35 machine running nfs-server
2.2beta37.

To put it simply, the following sequence causes mail loss in every client
I've tried:

* Mail is in my mailbox
* I delete it
* New mail arrives
* Mailbox is synced to disk (client unaware of new mail), new mail
is deleted with no warning.

Now, here's what's interesting. I can do a ls -l of the mailbox, and it
will show up with a certain size on the server. On the client, it will show
up with a certain *SMALLER* size! (This would be the period of time between
when the new mail arrives and the client is aware of it).

Now. How come non-Linux OSs have no trouble in this situation? How come
2.0.x works? How come 2.2.x does not? How can it be fixed?

-- 
John Goerzen   Linux, Unix consulting & programming   jgoerzen@complete.org |
Developer, Debian GNU/Linux (Free powerful OS upgrade)       www.debian.org |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Visit the Air Capital Linux Users Group on the web at http://www.aclug.org

- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/