I'm forwarding this from the qmail mailing list. Anybody has an idea what might be the problem? Matt? -- Andre
This was so well written by one of our network engineers and covers all the questions I need answers for that I just lifted it and am forwarding to the list for comment/help. I'll just add one additonal error that we see. These pop in and out when lots of mail is coming in (usually in alphabetical order, so in this case, the "b" partition is getting lots of hits on it in a short amount of time) Jul 26 12:23:31 nc4 /kernel: nfs server dm7_1.wlv:/b: is alive again Jul 26 12:23:54 nc4 /kernel: nfs server dm7_1.wlv:/b: not responding Jul 26 12:23:54 nc4 /kernel: nfs server dm7_1.wlv:/b: is alive again Jul 26 12:24:07 nc4 /kernel: nfs server dm7_1.wlv:/b: not responding Jul 26 12:24:08 nc4 /kernel: nfs server dm7_1.wlv:/b: not responding Jul 26 12:24:08 nc4 /kernel: nfs server dm7_1.wlv:/b: is alive again Jul 26 12:24:08 nc4 /kernel: nfs server dm7_1.wlv:/b: is alive again ****following is the text of Keith's questions... I am wondering if anyone is running FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE in an NFS-heavy environment and is noticing performance issues with NFS, or has any tips on how to tune NFS in the kernel. There are currently 6 identical servers that we are running FreeBSD on, though they were installed at different times so some servers are running FreeBSD 3.2-RELEASE, one FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE, and one FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE. The machine that is running FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE is noticably slower then the other boxes, and thus handles a lesser amount of email, even though they all have the same hardware configuration: Dual PIII 600Mhz, 512mb ram, 9.1gb IBM LVD SCSI system disk, two Intel 100BaseT NICs (it's a server motherboard, so one of them is integrated). I have 5 more servers that are setup with FreeBSD 4.0 that I want to put into place, but need to figure out what could be going on to cause this decrease in performance. These boxes are all running qmail. The machines are NFS mounting the mail spool directories off of an EMC Celerra on a dedicated NIC. The other interface is connected to the outside world where the servers are load balanced behind an Alteon Ace. Sometimes just a 'df' will take 10-15 seconds to run unless given the -n switch so it does not try to get new state information. It's not the backend Celerra since the FreeBSD 3.2 and 3.3 boxes are running fine, and we have a number of Sun servers attached to the Celerra as well, with no problems to report. A message that pops up in the messages file every once and awhile is: Jul 21 14:17:03 host /kernel: got bad cookie vp 0xdcc3d840 bp 0xcd03f6a0 Jul 21 14:17:03 host /kernel: got bad cookie vp 0xdcc3d840 bp 0xcd03f6a0 Jul 21 14:17:05 host /kernel: got bad cookie vp 0xdcc3d840 bp 0xcd040600 Jul 21 14:17:05 host /kernel: got bad cookie vp 0xdcc3d840 bp 0xcd040600 Jul 21 14:17:07 host /kernel: got bad cookie vp 0xdcc3d840 bp 0xcd040890 But, I am not sure what this error message means. I included it because it *might* have something to do with the problem, and wanted to include everything I had hoping that someone might have seen this problem before. My kernel configuration is pretty basic. I enable SMP, disable I386,486,586 support in the kernel, turn maxusers up to 256, disable USB support, and recompile the kernel. Nothing fancy on any of the boxes. It is what someone had configured one of ther boxes, and I just kept it the same across the board. qmail is accepting the mail and writing it to the queue, but it never gets a chance to delivery the email to the NFS-mounted mail spool directories. For instance, we received couple thousand email messages for usernames that started with 'b', and these messages piled up on the FreeBSD 4.0 servers, but were delivered immediatly on all of the other machines. Access to the other partitions mounted off of the same datamover (part of the Celerra, basically an NFS server) was fine. Does anyone have any tips or ideas they can pass on to me? I am lost on what it could be. Thanks, -- Keith McCallion [EMAIL PROTECTED] _____NetZero Free Internet Access and Email______ http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html
