[klibc] nfsmount default timeo=7 causes timeouts on 100 Mbps

Alkis Georgopoulos alkisg at gmail.com
Sat Sep 14 23:48:58 PDT 2019


I can't explain why 700 msecs aren't enough to avoid timeouts in 100 
Mbps networks, but my tests verify it, so I'm writing to the list to 
request that you increase the default timeo to at least 30, or to 600 
which is the default for `mount -t nfs`.

How to reproduce:

1) Cabling:
server <=> 100 Mbps switch <=> client

Alternatively, one can use a 1000 Mbps switch and this command:
ethtool -s enp3s0 speed 100 duplex full autoneg on

2) Server:
apt install nfs-kernel-server
echo '/srv *(ro,async,no_subtree_check)' >> /etc/exports
exportfs -ra
truncate -s 10G /srv/10G.file
The sparse file ensures that disk IO bandwidth isn't an issue.

3) Client:
/usr/lib/klibc/nfsmount -o timeo=7 192.168.1.112:/srv /mnt
dd if=/mnt/10G.file of=/dev/null status=progress

4) Result:
dd there starts with 11.2 MB/sec, which is fine/expected,
and it slowly drops to 2 MB/sec after a while,
it lags, omitting some seconds in its output line,
e.g. 507510784 bytes (508 MB, 484 MiB) copied, 186 s, 2,7 MB/s^C,
at which point "Ctrl+C" needs 30+ seconds to stop dd,
because of IO waiting etc.

In another terminal tab, `dmesg -w` is full of these:
[  316.404250] nfs: server 192.168.1.112 not responding, still trying
[  316.759512] nfs: server 192.168.1.112 OK

By using the NFS mount command defaults, timeo=600 and retrans=2, dd is 
constantly at 11.2 MB/sec, Ctrl+C is instant, and there's nothing in dmesg.

It is entirely possible that timeo=7 should be enough and I bumped into 
an NFS bug, but I'm not experienced enough to troubleshoot it more 
without help.

If anyone can make timeo=7 work properly in 100 Mbps networks in any 
distribution/version, please tell me to test with that.
I was testing with Ubuntu 18.04.3, kernel 4.15.

Kind regards,
Alkis Georgopoulos


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