AIX

Right, now that I've finally worked out this website, I'll ask my question!

I am having an absolute nightmare with NFS on AIX. I have used it many times, and I know what I'm doing, however I cannot fathom what is going on here. I have 2 LPARs, sitting on the same physical host. They are configured with an internal and external network. The internal network is being used here. Nothing has changed since this was working, as far as the network connections go. However, when I mount any exported filesystems from NIM to LPAR1, I get a timeout:

nfsmnthelp: NIMsvr: Connection timed out

I have checked the following:

1. /etc/hosts is correct on both, and I have tried using both networks
2. NFS is started on both NIM and LPAR1. I have tried restarting the services using `stopsrc -g nfs; stopsrc -s portmap` then starting them again
3. Stopping services, then running `rm -rf /etc/state /etc/sm /etc/sm.bak /etc/xtab /etc/rmtab; startsrc -s portmap; startsrc -g nfs; exportfs -a; showmount -e NIMsvr`. The last command shows the mount is available
4. Removing the export from NIM, removing it from LPAR1, then restarting NFS on both NIM and LPAR1, adding the mount back in and re-mounting (checking showmount -e before adding back in and after, and the mount shows up the second time)
5. Telnet to port 111 from LPAR1 to NIM works fine

I am out of ideas, can anyone help please? I am about to pull my last few hairs out!

I'm not an AIX expert so I am only commenting from a generic point of view. That said, have you verified the NFS versions being implemented??

On modern Unix systems and storage NFS can come in Versions 2, 3 and 4.

If one implementation is a later version than the other, you can specify the version (2,3, or 4) on the mount command line.

Trying to inter-operate different versions often gives rise to odd-behaviour, errors, and malfunctions.

I'm still thinking about it and if I come up with anything else I'll post again.

And, of course, the access rights must allow the connection; BOTH the NFS share AND the protection mask on the directory itself.

So for testing only, you could set the rights on the shared directory to 777 and share the NFS handle '-o rw,root' to allow the incoming NFS mount request to get root rights. Dangerous to leave it like that but it will tell you something if it then works.

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately this didn't work. I get the same error as before.

When you said "share the NFS handle '-o rw,root' I suspected you meant to put this into the exports file for that share...?

Yes, indeed. Again speaking generically something like:

Code:

# share -F nfs -o rw,root  <directory>

or

Code:

# share -F nfs -o rw,root=<client>  <directory>

if <client> is in the hosts file of the NFS serving node.

OK yeah so that doesn't work. The share command is also not available on my NIM server:

Code:

[root@NIMsvr export]$ share -F nfs -o rw,root /export/archive
share: 1831-186 nfs not found in /etc/exports
share: 1831-186 -o not found in /etc/exports
share: 1831-186 rw,root not found in /etc/exports
share: 1831-190 unknown option: root

Moderator's Comments:

Please use CODE tags as required by forum rules!