On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:16 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 9:33 PM, Rick Stevens <ricks@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> Try "lsof | grep nfs" to see if anything has the mountpoint open. If >> not, try "umount -f /mnt/nfs" as the root user to try a forced umount. >> >> Also check to see if the mount command (or /etc/fstab entry) has "hard" >> specified (that's the default as well). Unless you're really certain >> about the stability of the network and of the NFS server, I'd recommend >> you specify "soft" in the mount command (see "man 5 nfs" for details). > > That would depend on which is worse, potentially losing data or having > a client machine hang because the server is (perhaps temporarily) > unavailable. It depends totally on the specific application scenario. > To quote nfs(5): > > <quote> > A so-called "soft" timeout can cause silent data corruption in > certain cases. As such, use the soft option only when client > responsiveness is more important than data integrity. Using NFS over > TCP or increasing the value of the retrans option may mitigate some > of the risks of using the soft option. > </quote> > > IOW there is no "right" answer to this. > > poc The command "umount -f" fixed my problem. Thanks Rick. I had tried "umount -k", which works in older RedHat8 boxes; clearly I've got to re-read the man pages now and then. So, it appears a soft mount may be ok for read-only operations but not ideal for things such as remote X-applicatons or filesystems such as /home or /var/mail. It's wise to make the distinction between hard and soft mount --great pointer. ~af -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines