LinuxQuestions.org
Review your favorite Linux distribution.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Linux Answers > Networking
User Name
Password

Notices


By rahulk at 2007-02-06 12:10
It is a problem area which we have faced a lot which causes the services and server to hang up whenever a server which is mounted on another Liux server goes down.

NFS type mounted file systems by default, allow the "intr" flag which allows killing of those processes which are accessing a partition which no longer exists (since the mounted server has gone down). In a normal scenario, this "intr" flag is enogh to kill those processes which are in a hung state due to unavailability of the mounted file system. But there have been many scenarios in which even the "intr" flag is not enough and the process does not goes down.

There is a very cool trick to kill these processes. Following is the way:-

Whenever you hit the command to unmount a NFS partition, the first thing the OS does is to check whether any process is currently using the partition or not. You can use the following command to figure this out:-

fuser /mnt/<partition-name>

If the processes which are currently using this partition does not respond to "kill -9" command then you WILL have to have the MOUNTED partition available anyways before killing the process. So here is a work-around of this situation.

1. Create a virtual interface on the problem server which has the IP address same as the mounted server (which has gone down).

Lets say my mounted server is having an IP 192.168.1.3 and my server which is having the mounted partition is 192.168.1.4.

Now to kill the hunged processes in 192.168.1.4, we will have to bring the server (192.168.1.3) up inspite of the fact that it is actually down ;). So create a new virtual interface on ethernet card of 192.168.1.4.

ifconfig eth0:1 192.168.1.3 netmask 255.255.252.0

Now what we have done here is we have brought the remote server IP up ;).

Now you can kill the processes and unmount the file system.

After finishing up, remember to bring down the interface.

ifconfig eth0:1 down

Thats it!! Why this works is because of the simple reason that the mount and unmount commands always take into account the IP address which mounting/unmounting rather then the hostname. So this will always work out for you.

Thanks,
Rahul.

by anuragccsu on Tue, 2010-04-13 22:25
Hi Above,

I've an nfs server and from a client i am using a volume on it,
but on the server i want to unmount the volume which is mounted on a remote machine.
i did:
comment the corresponding partition in /etc/exports and run
exportfs -r
now when i try umount <partition name> it says me device or resource busy?
what is work around here?

thanks
Anurag

by devendrakoli on Thu, 2010-07-22 23:51
Hi Rahul,

Thanks for trick of adding a virtual IP.

Regards,
Devendra Koli

by MikeyCarter on Fri, 2013-06-21 10:25
Quote:
Originally Posted by devendrakoli View Post
Hi Rahul,

Thanks for trick of adding a virtual IP.

Regards,
Devendra Koli
I tried this trick and can get some of the commands unlocked. However unmounting I get "Stale file handle". The unmount -f and -l combinations give the same "stale file handle"

Any ideas?


  



All times are GMT -5. The time now is 12:04 PM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration