🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ignacij.712423602@meishan.animal.uiuc.edu> ignacij@meishan.animal.uiuc.edu (Ignacy Misztal) writes:

 >> >Someone told me to sync the time on the PC to the time on the Sun.  When I 
 >> >did this, the performance improved dramtically and there were no more 
 >> >spurts.
 >> 
 >> >Their reasoning was stale file  handles.  Experts?  Chime in.
 >> 
 >> 

Hmm...I'm not sure I understand this and I sure as hell understand NFS.
A "stale handle" is a file handle which the client has sent to the
server that no longer exists or is out of a server's cache.
When an NFS implemnetation creates a file via a CREATE RPC it sticks its
time/date concept in the files attributes; likewise when it writes to
it closes it; etc. it alters the attributes with a SETATTR call.  If the
time in the attributes associated with a handle was off perhaps the
handle/attributes would get flushed from the NFS server's cache but it
certainly should not be a stale.

Just because I didn't want to get embarassed I looked up stale handles:
	"NFSERR_STALE

	the "fhandle" given in the arguments is invalid.  That is, the
	file referred to by that file handle no longer exists, or
	access to it has been revoked".

Back when I figured out the zen of stale handles I would typically see
them from an editor that did the classic:
	1. create 	-> tmpfile
	2. rename	file.x -> file.xyz
	3. delete 	file.x
	4. rename tmpfile -> file.x.

using file.x's old handle (from #2) in # 4 will generate a stale handle.

Me thinks there is more to your problem that goes beyond setting the
time and walking away.  Its going to bite you later....

 >> How do you sync the time on the PC? By simply setting time? To 
 >> a second, minute?

Using Network time protocol against a time server.  We provide a setclock
program; I'm sure IBM does the same.


Larry Backman
FTP Software