Question

rpc.mountd is stopped

Asked by: nightmare2

Hi,

I use a HP DL320S with openfiler 2.2 (on rpath linux) to make backups of a Vmware ESX server.
The VMs are exported to a NFS share mounted on the ESX host.
However, the process fails after a while and I noticed it's because rpc.mountd is not running anymore thus making the share inaccessible.

# service nfs status
Shutting down NFS mountd: rpc.mountd is stopped
nfsd (pid 4315 4314 4313 4312 4311 4310 4309 4308) is running...
rpc.rquotad (pid 4302) is running...


Any help will be appreciated (linux n00b here)

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Asked On
2007-07-16 at 16:28:42ID22700231
Tags

nfs

,

stopped

Topics

NFS File Server

,

Linux Networking

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
9

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Answers

 

by: NopiusPosted on 2007-07-17 at 01:26:40ID: 19502997

Mountd doesn't start if you have no exported filesystems.


To export FS you should edit /etc/exports (man exports), then run 'exportfs -a' and only then you may run mountd:
/usr/sbin/rpc.mountd

 

by: nightmare2Posted on 2007-07-17 at 01:31:19ID: 19503011

I do have exported file systems.
NFS starts but stops randomly.

 

by: NopiusPosted on 2007-07-17 at 05:47:25ID: 19504263

You may see /var/log/messages for any reasons why rpc.mountd.
What seems strange to me is, why the command:

# service nfs status
Shutting down NFS mountd: rpc.mountd is stopped

results to stopping rpc.mountd. Such message is usually printed when we do service 'stop'. In your case it seems that 'status' command shuts down rpc.mountd. Try to _not_ run this command (as root). May be your rpc.mountd will be alive.
Also try to find core files after possible rpc.mountd crash.

It's possible you are being hacked, there where vulnerabilities in rpc.mountd, for example read here: http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/423143

What OS/version are you using, how often do you perform software updates?

 

by: nightmare2Posted on 2007-07-17 at 06:39:31ID: 19504675

It's part of the startup script:

  status)
        [ -x /usr/sbin/rpc.svcgssd ] && /sbin/service rpcsvcgssd status
        echo -n $"Shutting down NFS mountd: "
        status rpc.mountd
        status nfsd

It's not shutting down mountd. The echo statement is wrong.

OS is openfiler 2.2 appliance (based on rpath) with the latest patches.
I don't see anything interesting in /var/log/messages :(

 

by: NopiusPosted on 2007-07-17 at 15:59:43ID: 19509836

Probably it's a bug either in OS or in rpc.mountd. Without any info about why mountd is stopped we may only guess.
If you wish, you may try to debug this service yourself (for example to run 'strace -f -o /tmp/logfile rpc.mountd') or you may try to find your problem in support forum or to subscribe to support mailing list here: http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/openfiler/ . Also you may buy a commercial support for openfiler and ask them what the problem.

I viewed mailing list for last year and didn't find why your problem occurs.
Probably I found your question there: http://www.openfiler.com/community/forums/viewtopic.php?id=1154
without any answer (as many other questions on this forum). But there are more details in that post:


*** glibc detected *** double free or corruption (!prev): 0x00000000005209a0 ***
Aborted

So it's a 100% bug, but not sure I'm in what library/software.

What about commercial support, I didn't read their agreement, but most probably they will not help you with a bug in a 3rd party software (even GNU rpc.mountd). It _may_ be a result of a compilation problem (suppose they use gcc 4.x to create openfiler distribution) so they may fix it. Or it may be a bug in a glibc (there where a fixed in november 2006 bug: glibc  264884  globfree() double-frees). So I suggest you to ask a question in a 'distribution' forum and recommend the developers to upgrade glibc package. Typically it's a paintfull upgrade and that's why your glibc (openfiler 2.2 distribution glibc) may be obsolete and have this bug.

Also I found one advice to run 'export MALLOC_CHECK_=1' or 'MALLOC_CHECK_=0' before starting rpc.mountd (try either 1 or 0 on failure and run rpc.mountd directly from command line, not with a 'service' script).

Another advice - write a small 'monitor' script that will check every 1 second for rpc.mountd. If it's not running - restart it again. This may be a workaround for a short time until this problem will be fixed by developers of the openfiler distro.

 

by: nightmare2Posted on 2007-07-17 at 16:07:34ID: 19509883

Thanks a lot for all these advices and your time.
That was indeed my post on the openfiler forum, and it's still the same problem.
Except for the glibc error which disappeared after a CPU swap.
Not sure it was nfs related anyway.
I'll keep you posted.

 

by: nightmare2Posted on 2007-07-20 at 08:02:07ID: 19531660

MALLOC_CHECK_=1  gave me another error, still glibc related.
The lesson is that it's better not to install anything on an openfiler appliance (especially compilers ...)
Everything seems to be running fine now (fingers crossed) after a clean install.

 

by: NopiusPosted on 2007-07-20 at 18:29:30ID: 19536613

Thank you for points, nightmare2.
Linux become more and more like Windows with 'only reboot fix it' and 'clean install may help'.
You didn't mention what modifications have been done to the default system. Fine if it works now.

 

by: nightmare2Posted on 2007-07-21 at 04:48:03ID: 19538182

I wanted to compile some tools.
As far as I recall, the additional modules were:

automake
autoconf
glibc:devel
gcc-c++

Not much but it broke nfs and it's beyond my skills to fix it.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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