Unkillable processes?

[Ben Scott]

On 2/19/06, Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> wrote:
>>   Won't mounting the NFS filesystems with the "soft,intr" options
>> prevent that from happening in the first place?
>
> If you have the O'Reilly book for NFS and NIS ...

  Let's assume I don't.  Please explain.

  In the past, when working with NFS, soft,intr got me the behavior I
wanted -- problems not on my machine didn't hang my machine, and
failures were propagated up to higher levels as I/O errors (which they
are).  I do recall increasing some timeout or other based on
somebody's recommendation at the time.  Granted, I've never used NFS
all that much.  Most of my experience with it was at UNH, where hung
NFS mounts were a source of frustration.  Again granted, that
environment (the Space Science Center) wasn't a pillar of best
practices, so maybe the whole setup was just hosed.

  I do recall that on a diskless workstation, "soft,intr" doesn't get
you anything, since if NFS is out you've lost all your filesystems and
you're hosed anyway (so you might as well wait forever), but diskless
workstations are *so* passe.  ;-)

  (I do have a copy of the book *somewhere*, but I can't find it right
now.  (I suspect it's in my box o' books at the office, which I will
likely need an excavator to exhume.))

-- Ben