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NFS (and NIS) client causes server to semi-hang

DISCUSSION Seb James 1 participant 2 messages Jun 12, 2003

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Seb James

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Hello,

I've come across a rather worrying problem.

I have a small network of computers, sitting behind a adsl modem/router. The internal ip domain is hypercube, I have also called the yp domain hypercube as it is the identical set of machines.

The server is:

circle.hypercube

nis server, nfs fileserver, dhcp server, firewall.

I know it shouldn't be a firewall at the same time as all those other functions, but it is for now as I want to use it as a stand alone machine if nothing else is running. It's running redhat 7.2, fully updated with security patches. Kernel version is 2.4.20-18.7 (a redhat precompiled kernel).

The two clients are:

darius:    desktop machine running fully updated redhat 9.0 installation
herodotus: a laptop also with updated redhat 9.0.

Herodotus is set up to mount /home and a directory called /data from circle, with the following lines in /etc/fstab:

circle:/data /data nfs defaults 0 0
circle:/home /home nfs defaults 0 0

It is also set up as an nis client, with the following in /etc/yp.conf

domain hypercube server circle.hypercube

And it works just fine, so I believe the server is correctly set up.

Darius has the same set-up as herodotus, but......

Neither nfs nor ypbind function.

Trying to mount a volume:

[root@darius /]# mount /data/
pmap_getmaps rpc problem: RPC: Timed out
mount: RPC: Port mapper failure - RPC: Timed out
[root@darius /]#

NB: a portmapper is running on both darius and circle (and herodotus, too).

Trying to start ypbind:

[root@darius /]# service ypbind start

Setting NIS domain name hypercube:             [  OK  ]
Binding to the NIS domain:                     [  OK  ]
Listening for and NIS domain server........    [FAILED]

[root@darius /]#

Now, when I try to do *either* of these, the server starts to play up. It begins to timeout on almost anything network or authentication related. For example, to bring up a new terminal window in X takes at least a minute and to then access a website using, say lynx, takes a similar time. I'm confused as to why both ypbind and mounting a volume on the server should be able to cause this denial of service.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Also, is there a suitable NIS related list to post this message to, as I think it's relevant for that, too.

best regards,

Seb James.

Signature · 11 lines
Seb James <[email protected]>



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author
#1 lore raw
Quoted 3 lines · Seb James

Hello,

I've come across a rather worrying problem.

[ snip ]

Quoted 4 lines

Does anyone have any ideas?

Also, is there a suitable NIS related list to post this message to, as I think it's relevant for that, too.

Fixed: darius was not listed in the /etc/hosts.allow file. However, it doesn't seem right that such a problem should lead to the server freezing up in the way that it did.

Cheers,

Seb.

Signature · 11 lines
Seb James <[email protected]>



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