Re: nfs-mounting AIX fs from linux ramdisk client

On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 05:20:41PM +0300, Zvi Bar-Deroma wrote:

Hi Zvi
there is new redbook on NFS
it covers some AIX/linux peculiarities in mounts

Hope this helps


Hi,

Please consider the following scenario:


We're trying to build a ramdisk for Debian Linux that boots root from an
NFS filesystem. The NFS server is an AIX 5.3 machine. Linux uses
statically linked nfs client (called nfsmount, comes with klibc-utils
that are used for ramdisks construction on debian, by initramfs-utils
package).

When the ramdisk tries to mount the required fs from the aix server
Trying to mount the fs by the ramdisk fails after a long timeout. Using
the same "nfsmount" from a running (not ramdisk) linux system to mount
an AIX fs, fails exactly as with the ramdisk case.
Regular "mount -t nfs ..." works fine, but requires the use of
dynamically linked executables which is undesirable for us.

When the server is a linux system (same physical machine as the client),
"nfsmount" succeeds using a running system. We did not have the chance
to try with 2 different machines, therefore we couldn't have tried to
use "nfsmount" from "ramdisk" with a linux NFS server.

We tried a suggestion from
http://www.groupsrv.com/linux/about105785.html
at the bottom of the page, where similar scenario of ubuntu ramdisk trying
to mount AIX-hosted NFS is treated. They solved it by mounting with "-o
nolock,proto=tcp" options. In our case that means "-o nolock,tcp".
This didn't help. We have also tried changing the block sizes, but this
didn't help either.

Any ideas how solve the problem (or at least, how to get more
information for solving) ?

We'd appreciate your assistance,
/Zvika

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