[mythtv-users] Incomming WAF Problem: NFS "Crashing" on Jaunty

[Brian Wood]

On Friday 05 June 2009 12:29:25 Douglas Wagner wrote:
> Ok, so I've got 3 days to figure this one out before my WAF goes to the
> tubes.
>
> Been using Myth for a few years now.  A year or two ago I came across
> mythbuntu and was pretty impressed so I installed 8.04.  Last week, due to
> wanting some better tools, and a successful upgrade of my ubuntu desktop at
> work, I decided to upgrade to mythbuntu 9.04 Jaunty.
>
> Did a double network upgrade (8.04 -> 8.10 -> 9.04).  The upgrade got hung
> up in the 8.10 ->9.04 side with some symbolic links to NFS shares and
> didn't install correctly.  Removing and adding a few packages (basically a
> readd of the mythbuntu consolidated package) fixed the issue and has the
> machine up and running.
>
> Now, however, i'm facing a rather large issue.  I have all of my video
> shares (other than a small 250GB drive in the Myth Box that gets the
> initial recording) on NFS Shares shared from my NAS Box.  At this point,it
> seems that periodically (at MOST every 24 hours but I'm guessing it's only
> taking a few hours) my Myth box looses NFS connectivity, to the point where
> it cannot see any of my NFS shares anymore.  At this point the mythfrontend
> goes into a "hung up" state when attempting to access the recording or
> video section (the stuff on the nas is symbolic linked through NFS to LOOK
> like files on the local system.  Yes, I know this is so Myth 0.19 and
> there's other ways to do this now).
>
> The root cause seems to be myth being unable to read from NFS.  I can
> unmount but not remount the NFS shares.  Restarting NFS-COMMON doesn't seem
> to help.
>
> I CANNOT have this box having to be rebooted every few hours to make it
> useful.  Anyone have any ideas what the heck is going on?  Rebooting the
> myth box brings the NFS shares back with no problems at all.  Last night I
> restarted the NAS box and did a remount of everything and all was in good
> shape...so it seems I can "fix" it from either end.
>
> I can tell it's not the NAS system, because I have some of the same shares
> mounted on other boxes and no other box other than the Myth box has issues
> with the shares (i.e. When the myth box can't access them the rest of the
> boxes can.)
>
> All of the exports on the NAS use the same export type (pretty basic):
>
> /mnt/video3 192.168.100.0/24(rw,async)
>
> And are being mounted as follows:
>
> nas:/mnt/video3         /mnt/video3             nfs
> intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,async,nfsvers=3,bg,actimeo=0,tcp
>
> HELP?  Any ideas?  Would dropping a mythbuntu 9.04 DVD in the drive and
> doing an "upgrade" (is this possible without blowing away settings?) to
> replace all the system packages with what they should be help?  Can I do a
> non-destructive "something's broken, fix it" installation?  Any particular
> packages I can remove-reinstall to see about fixing this?
>
> Is there a better way to mount these shares or is there a known bug with
> NFS?

A quick google shows a lot of folks having similar problems (not necessarily 
with Myth). Some seem to think it's a problem with the 2.6.28 kernel Ubuntu 
9.04 is using.

You might try an SMB/CIFS mount, or even upgrading to 2.6.29.

Gossamer shows a lot of NFS problems, but I didn't read enough of them to 
determine if they are all with 9.04.

I'm curious what "better tools" would have motivated you to upgrade a working 
system.

-- 
beww
beww at beww.org