[ale] NFS over wireless

[Matt Rideout]

Glad to hear it. If there's anyway to improve the reliability of the 
local network, that would be the ideal solution. Powerline networking 
works reasonably well, and since you can't run cables that may be your 
best option if you can't get the wireless to be more reliable.

*If* you needed to address this on the NFS level, you could also try 
reducing your rsize, wsize, and timeo parameters so that you can better 
cope with the packet loss.

William Witt wrote, On 08/31/2009 06:21 PM:
> This helps a little.  Nautilus still hangs a bit on ubuntu in the middle 
> of the of the copy, but at least it comes up for air occasionally. 
> Additionally, each machine is now able to interact with the file server 
> while the other is copying large files.  This was spotty at best before.
>
> On 08/31/2009 01:13 AM, Matt Rideout wrote:
>   
>> I assume that you're running NFS over UDP? Switching to TCP is where I'd
>> start.
>>
>> William Witt wrote, On 08/30/2009 10:00 PM:
>>     
>>> The setup:
>>> I have an old laptop(+ a 500GB hd) acting as an NFS file server and uPnP
>>> media server for my xbox360 connected via CAT5 and running
>>> ubuntu-server.  I have two machines (mine and my wifes) plus the xbox
>>> connected wirelessly.  My wife machine runs linuxMint and mine is
>>> currently running Fedora 11.
>>>
>>> The problem:
>>> When either of us is copying large files (typically 1-2 GB movies) to
>>> the file server, my wife's desktop and any nautilus windows will freeze
>>> and sometimes crash.  I know it has to do with the NFS server because
>>> when this happens "dmesg | tail" yeilds:
>>>
>>> [ 2109.988015] nfs: server smeagol not responding, timed out
>>> [ 2111.488016] nfs: server smeagol not responding, timed out
>>> [ 2112.988020] nfs: server smeagol not responding, timed out
>>> [ 2114.488016] nfs: server smeagol not responding, timed out
>>> [ 2115.988014] nfs: server smeagol not responding, timed out
>>> [ 2117.488015] nfs: server smeagol not responding, timed out
>>> [ 2118.988020] nfs: server smeagol not responding, timed out
>>> [ 2120.488016] nfs: server smeagol not responding, timed out
>>> [ 2121.988023] nfs: server smeagol not responding, timed out
>>> [ 2164.731019] nfs: server smeagol not responding, timed out
>>>
>>> There is still enough available bandwidth on the wireless connection to
>>> surf the web and do email.  And on her machine, everything but nautilus
>>> works fine as long as there are no gnome file dialogs involved.  My
>>> machine doesn't even hiccup, except for taking a long time to do an ls
>>> on the nfs mount point.  I did see the same problem on my machine under
>>> linuxMint and Ubuntu, but not under Suse or Fedora.
>>>
>>> The Question:
>>> My wife is opposed to me doing much to her machine that will impact her
>>> work flow, so putting her on Suse or Fedora is out of the question.  I
>>> don't own the house or I'd just run cat5 to her box.  Is there a better
>>> way to tune NFS over wireless networks that will eliminate this problem
>>> on ubuntu based boxen?  Am I baking up the wrong tree with NFS over
>>> wireless in the first place?  If so, what should I be using?
>>>
>>> On a side note, there seems to be something in our flooring that causes
>>> A LOT of loos between the second and first floor.  I wonder if there is
>>> some sort of anti static conductive coating on the laminate flooring
>>> that the owners put down.
>>>
>>> Will
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Ale mailing list
>>> Ale at ale.org
>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>>
>>>       
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