Re: File locking problems?

Bill Hawes (whawes@star.net)
Mon, 03 Nov 1997 22:35:14 -0500


thospel@mail.dma.be wrote:

> There also seems to be a problem with the nfs daemons inheriting
> filedescriptors from the program that causes them to be started.
> I don't know if this problem will also exist with autofs, never used it.
>
> I run amd which opens a logfile (for me /var/adm/amd, which in reality lives
> in my /.home partition). The nfs daemons inherit this file descriptor (easy to
> see in their /proc entries in the recent kernels), and when at shutdown time
> the processes get killed, amd stops and closes the file descriptor, but
> the nfs damons stay around (they seem unkillable) with /var/adm/amd open,
> so /.home cannot be unmounted -> big filesystem check at the next boot.

This problem has been fixed in the 2.1.xx nfs daemons. The underlying
limitation was that do_fork() didn't like having a NULL files pointer,
and sometimes rpciod got started from lockd. The fork() code now tests
for NULL files, so the daemons can close their files.

Regards,
Bill