[ILUG] NFS advice

[Paul Jakma]

On Tue, 7 Feb 2006, Kevin Philp wrote:

> 500mb for the desktops and 700mb for the server. The server flies 
> all the time, its just the desktops. I checked one of the 
> complainers and they were editing a 10MB OpenOffice presentation! 
> That took time to load even on the local hard drive.

FWIW, I have users who use OOo on a 448MB laptop, with /home on NFS, 
accessed via 1 to 2MB/s 802.11g. Seems fine.

> I am not in the office now but the server is a 2.4 kernel, can 
> remember exactly and the desktops are 2.6.8 if memory serves me 
> correctly.

Ah, one of those versions is *way* too old. The other is just old.

- move the server to 2.6, much better
- if not already so:
   - move the filesystems exported to ext3
   - mount them with 'data=journal'
   - the default journal size is pretty small for ext3 iirc (man page
     doesn't say exactly what size, but its order of 10MB for a
     multi-GB filesystem), use the '-J size=<number of MB>' option to
     mke2fs, order of 100MB is more appropriate imho.

   Even with a small (e.g. default) size journal, data=journal should
   make a difference to writes via NFS.

- Unless you have a perfect network, have clients mount as TCP.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made.
 		-- Immanuel Kant