New NFS Share Problems

[apeasecpc]

We use NFS to mount a Windows 2003 server share onto our SCO UNIX 3.2v5.0.6 server so staff can export text files from a database on the SCO server to a network drive.

Just this last week we have started seeing odd behavior where files copied to the NFS share look ok when accessed through the SCO server, but when accessed from the Windows 2003 server there are chunks of data missing in the middle of the files. The missing data is replaced with bytes having a value of 0.

There have been no changes made to the SCO server for the past several months. We recently installed patches on the Windows 2003 server, which I suspect are the cause of the problem. We have tried dismounting and re-mounting the NFS share on the SCO server, stopping and restarting the NFS service on the Windows 2003 server, and restarting both servers, but the problem still was not resolved.

Has anyone else out there experienced any problems with NFS and Windows 2003 server recently?

 

[stanhubble]

you could try doing a checksum or md5sum on the file from both OS's to see if the file is actually corrupt or it is just a display problem on the 2k3 side.

 

[apeasecpc]

This isn't a display problem. The data is missing no matter what program I use to access the file. I've tried "edit" from the command prompt and the "excel" import tool. If I make a copy of the file the data is missing in the copy even under the UNIX side.

 

[stanhubble]

so that is saying the original "copy" did not complete or the nfs commit did not complete.

what does the nfs mount command look like (or /etc/default/filesys entry)?

 

[apeasecpc]

The /etc/default/filesys entry is below:

bdev=gloria:/transfer \
mountdir=/public mount=no fstyp=NFS \
rcmount=yes \
mntopts=rw

This has not changed and has been working fine for years. It was originally set up in the filesystem manager.

As I originally stated, the file copies without error, and contains all data when I vi from the mount on the UNIX server, but when I look at the file from the 2003 server consol a continuous chunk in the middle of the file (in this case bytes 400h-BFFh) has been replaced with 00h. The portions before and after this chunk are not effected. If I look at the file again on the UNIX server it shows all data as before.

It is almost like the file allocation table provided to NFS is mapping different physical hard drive sectors than the NTFS filesystem on the 2003 server.

 

[apeasecpc]

I just ran another test and it looks like the microsoft .Net Framework patch released last thursday (2/12/09) may have corrected this problem.

My test files from before the patch now show the missing chunk on both UNIX and 2003. When I copy a new test file from the same source that didn't work before, it now appears correct on both systems.

Unfortunately this problem is somewhat intermittent, so it is too soon to know for sure that it has been fixed. I'll keep you posted.

 

[stanhubble]

That's bizarre, but not unprecedented for microsoft.

i have run into some strange nfs problems with other (linux) systems. It usually came down to the different versions of nfs ( SCO = v2 linux = v3 or v4) not autosensing the others version.