Problems using Linux as an NFS server.
 

Hi, sorry for the long post, but please can someone suggest where to go from here....

I have a Redhat 7.2 server running NFS and exporting a 400Gb Filesystem.
I also have an RS, AIX5.1 which has the filesystem mounted. Lotus Domino Notes is running on the RS.

The setup on the RS is as follows...

/server1 (main Domino Notes server directory)
/server1/archive (nfs mount of Linux filesystem, where archive databases are held)

Have been having various issues with this setup, it seems that for some reason, nfs stops responding on the Linux box which always seems to happen over night. When I get to work in the morning, I reboot the server and nfs works fine after that. This happened about 3 times in 4 months, but lately has been happening more often perhaps about once a week now.

Due to the nature of Notes, the nfs accessing is pretty much constant throughout the day, as Notes seems to "stat" files, constantly, to keep its cached file lists up to date, even if the files aren't being used at the time (over night for instance), if that makes sence. Also FYI, Notes shuts down between 1am and 4am for backup.

The system/setup seemed to work OK when testing, so maybe its a workload issue, as when testing only a few archive files were used, compared to the amount of files that are on the file system at the moment. Also are slowly migrating people to use the archiving feature of Notes on the server instead of to their C: drives, so this too has slowly increased the workload of the mount point.

My question is, why would nfs on the Linux box stop responding?

What things can I check, is there any log files hanging around, couldn't see any in the /var directory, or is there any logging I can turn on to help for future diagnostics. I guess I could setup a cron job to gather stats every half hour through out the day or something.

Afraid this is the first time I have really impemented nfs seriously, usually only used it for a few minutes at a time to mount CDs or copy files over the network etc, so my experience with administrating nfs is minimal.

Any help/suggestions would be greatly received as this is effecting our live email server and is becomming an issue with our management etc.

Bump, anyone help?