Question

Slow NFS Performance

Asked by: aaamr

We moved our office a few weeks ago, and as part of that move, re-ip'd the whole environment from a 10.0.0.x range to a 192.168.0.x range.

Since then, we've had performance issues on Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX NFS clients.  Our linux clients are as well-behaved as they ever were.

We get a lot of RPC timeouts, and very slow performance on the NFS mounted directories.  Have tried playing with vers=2/vers=3 and tweaking the wsize/rsize params, but so far, no luck.

Looking for any suggestions or ideas...  Since the linux environments remain fast, I think we can safely rule out a network or hardware issue, so I'm thinking it's on the nfs clients themselves.

netstat -i shows no collisions on the interfaces themselves.

nfsstat from the client shows a lot of badcalls and badxids:

# nfsstat -rc

Client rpc:
Connection oriented:
calls      badcalls   badxids    timeouts   newcreds   badverfs   timers
27347      2599       537        2563       0          0          0
cantconn   nomem      interrupts
0          0          17
Connectionless:
calls      badcalls   retrans    badxids    timeouts   newcreds   badverfs
9          1          0          0          0          0          0
timers     nomem      cantsend
6          0          0



Finally, a truss of a cp from an NFS mount to local disk on the client hangs on the following line:

write(4, 0xFE800000, 8388608)   (sleeping...)


We have a fairly heterogenous environment, and the NFS servers in question are a linux-based Snap Server, and a stock Solaris 8 box with clients running linux, solaris, HP-UX, and AIX.  None of these issues were present in the old environment, and the linux clients are all still happy.

Looking for any ideas...



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Asked On
2006-04-07 at 09:26:27ID21805817
Tags

nfs

,

slow

Topic

Unix Networking

Participating Experts
2
Points
400
Comments
24

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Answers

 

by: gheistPosted on 2006-04-08 at 08:44:27ID: 16407648

Maybe some TCP extension recently implemented in Linux, or PMTU blackhole.

 

by: ahoffmannPosted on 2006-04-08 at 18:00:52ID: 16409689

does your DNS reverse lookup work correctly?

 

by: aaamrPosted on 2006-04-10 at 06:46:43ID: 16417233

Reverse dns is ok...

Did a quick audit of the network topology, and found a mess of switches chained in to our QA area... current hypothesis is "too many hops", so I'm redoing the network to eliminate as many chained devices as possible.

 

by: ahoffmannPosted on 2006-04-10 at 07:28:57ID: 16417635

reset all switches (they may struggle with their MAC tables;-)

 

by: gheistPosted on 2006-04-10 at 14:33:27ID: 16421553

calls      badcalls   badxids    timeouts
27347      2599       537        2563  

Looks more like PMTU blackhole in the middle.

 

by: aaamrPosted on 2006-04-10 at 16:03:49ID: 16422356

Would PMTU blackholes affect a local LAN?  What's the best way to diagnose (and fix?)?

 

by: gheistPosted on 2006-04-11 at 00:31:11ID: 16424235

pinging with 1500 or 9000 byte packets.

 

by: gheistPosted on 2006-04-11 at 00:31:38ID: 16424237

(or broken checksum processor in netcard, or wiring fault)

 

by: aaamrPosted on 2006-04-11 at 07:16:12ID: 16427097

Doesn't look limk PMTU issues:

# ping -sn nfsserver 9000
PING nfsserver (192.168.0.50): 9000 data bytes
9008 bytes from 192.168.0.50: icmp_seq=0. time=2.96 ms
9008 bytes from 192.168.0.50: icmp_seq=1. time=2.53 ms

...

----nfsserver PING Statistics----
13 packets transmitted, 13 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip (ms)  min/avg/max/stddev = 2.52/2.565/2.96/0.120

 

by: gheistPosted on 2006-04-11 at 10:33:12ID: 16429173

Add -D flag to ping to make it nonfragmenting.

 

by: aaamrPosted on 2006-04-11 at 13:45:23ID: 16431211

Max size, non fragmenting is 1472 (standard MTU of 1500 less the 28 byte header).

Packets larger than that don't go.

C:\ping -l 1473 -f wise

Pinging wise [192.168.0.50] with 1473 bytes of data:

Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.
Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.50:
    Packets: Sent = 2, Received = 0, Lost = 2 (100% loss),

 

by: ahoffmannPosted on 2006-04-11 at 13:56:45ID: 16431334

hardware problem, either NIC or hub or switch

 

by: aaamrPosted on 2006-04-11 at 15:50:13ID: 16432167

Hmmm... the behavior is evident on several servers which would seem to rule out an individual NIC.  

The switches are a mix of Cisco, SMC, Netgear, and 3Com gear... some of them are pretty old.

I'm planning to subnet the network to try and isolate the issue, but can't do so until May.

 

by: ahoffmannPosted on 2006-04-11 at 23:33:45ID: 16433684

did you reset *all* switches (see http:#16417635)
another reason might be a routing problem, check with traceroute from both ends

 

by: gheistPosted on 2006-04-12 at 00:33:17ID: 16433936

is there a ROUTER of FIREWALL involved where problem occur???

 

by: aaamrPosted on 2006-04-12 at 05:02:30ID: 16435153

No router or fw between the boxes in question, though when we subnet the networkm we'll add a small router at that time.

Traceroutes seem ok.... will try resetting all switches today.

 

by: aaamrPosted on 2006-04-12 at 07:31:00ID: 16436466

Did some network sniffing and dumped the results into Ethereal for analysis.  I'm seeing a lot of:

- TCP Previous segment lost
- TCP Dup ACK
- TCP Retransmission
- TCP Out-of-order
- TCP Window Update


This implies that packets are being lost somewhere, or at the very least going temporarily astray.

 

by: aaamrPosted on 2006-04-12 at 11:06:07ID: 16438779

Can someone shed some light on this?  I flipped the interface on one of the nfs servers to the other nic on the assumption that we might have a bad nic.

It autonegotiated to 100-half-duplex (this is a Solaris 8 box) and things suddenly got a lot faster.

This box is plugged directly into a Cisco Catalyst 2950 XL switch... which should talk 100fd, but I can't argue with the results.

Why would 100hd be faster in this case when plugged into a switch?

 

by: ahoffmannPosted on 2006-04-12 at 11:49:59ID: 16439211

hmm, sounds like the auto-negotation failed

try to install Ethtool http://freshmeat.net/redir/ethtool/20128/url_homepage/gkernel (not sure if it works for Sun boxes)

 

by: gheistPosted on 2006-04-12 at 14:54:17ID: 16440937

Catalyst always had serious problems with NWay. Install  firmware newer than netcard or force both ends to same media/duplex.

- TCP Previous segment lost -> duplex prob
- TCP Dup ACK -> duplex prob
- TCP Retransmission -> duplex prob
- TCP Out-of-order -> normal work
- TCP Window Update -> normal work

bad checksums would note wire problem or node netcard checksum processor problems

 

by: gheistPosted on 2006-04-12 at 15:45:29ID: 16441300

I have asked moderators to reopen question - reconsider which answer led you to acknowleging that you use Catalyst, which led me to solution, and share points at least there.

 

by: aaamrPosted on 2006-04-12 at 19:37:27ID: 16442347

Agreed... moderators, please split points between gheist and ahoffmann.  Was a team effort.

 

by: aaamrPosted on 2006-04-13 at 04:46:38ID: 16444451

Thanks everyone for all the ideas, and for working through this issue with me.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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