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Troubleshooting gNFS

Troubleshooting Gluster NFS

This section describes the most common troubleshooting issues related to NFS .

mount command on NFS client fails with “RPC Error: Program not registered”

Start portmap or rpcbind service on the NFS server.

This error is encountered when the server has not started correctly. On most Linux distributions this is fixed by starting portmap:

/etc/init.d/portmap start

On some distributions where portmap has been replaced by rpcbind, the following command is required:

/etc/init.d/rpcbind start

After starting portmap or rpcbind, gluster NFS server needs to be restarted.

NFS server start-up fails with “Port is already in use” error in the log file.

Another Gluster NFS server is running on the same machine.

This error can arise in case there is already a Gluster NFS server running on the same machine. This situation can be confirmed from the log file, if the following error lines exist:

[2010-05-26 23:40:49] E [rpc-socket.c:126:rpcsvc_socket_listen] rpc-socket: binding socket failed:Address already in use
[2010-05-26 23:40:49] E [rpc-socket.c:129:rpcsvc_socket_listen] rpc-socket: Port is already in use
[2010-05-26 23:40:49] E [rpcsvc.c:2636:rpcsvc_stage_program_register] rpc-service: could not create listening connection
[2010-05-26 23:40:49] E [rpcsvc.c:2675:rpcsvc_program_register] rpc-service: stage registration of program failed
[2010-05-26 23:40:49] E [rpcsvc.c:2695:rpcsvc_program_register] rpc-service: Program registration failed: MOUNT3, Num: 100005, Ver: 3, Port: 38465
[2010-05-26 23:40:49] E [nfs.c:125:nfs_init_versions] nfs: Program init failed
[2010-05-26 23:40:49] C [nfs.c:531:notify] nfs: Failed to initialize protocols

To resolve this error one of the Gluster NFS servers will have to be shutdown. At this time, Gluster NFS server does not support running multiple NFS servers on the same machine.

If the mount command fails with the following error message:

mount.nfs: rpc.statd is not running but is required for remote locking.
mount.nfs: Either use '-o nolock' to keep locks local, or start statd.

For NFS clients to mount the NFS server, rpc.statd service must be running on the clients. Start rpc.statd service by running the following command:

rpc.statd

mount command takes too long to finish.

Start rpcbind service on the NFS client

The problem is that the rpcbind or portmap service is not running on the NFS client. The resolution for this is to start either of these services by running the following command:

/etc/init.d/portmap start

On some distributions where portmap has been replaced by rpcbind, the following command is required:

/etc/init.d/rpcbind start

NFS server glusterfsd starts but initialization fails with “nfsrpc- service: portmap registration of program failed” error message in the log.

NFS start-up can succeed but the initialization of the NFS service can still fail preventing clients from accessing the mount points. Such a situation can be confirmed from the following error messages in the log file:

[2010-05-26 23:33:47] E [rpcsvc.c:2598:rpcsvc_program_register_portmap] rpc-service: Could notregister with portmap
[2010-05-26 23:33:47] E [rpcsvc.c:2682:rpcsvc_program_register] rpc-service: portmap registration of program failed
[2010-05-26 23:33:47] E [rpcsvc.c:2695:rpcsvc_program_register] rpc-service: Program registration failed: MOUNT3, Num: 100005, Ver: 3, Port: 38465
[2010-05-26 23:33:47] E [nfs.c:125:nfs_init_versions] nfs: Program init failed
[2010-05-26 23:33:47] C [nfs.c:531:notify] nfs: Failed to initialize protocols
[2010-05-26 23:33:49] E [rpcsvc.c:2614:rpcsvc_program_unregister_portmap] rpc-service: Could not unregister with portmap
[2010-05-26 23:33:49] E [rpcsvc.c:2731:rpcsvc_program_unregister] rpc-service: portmap unregistration of program failed
[2010-05-26 23:33:49] E [rpcsvc.c:2744:rpcsvc_program_unregister] rpc-service: Program unregistration failed: MOUNT3, Num: 100005, Ver: 3, Port: 38465
  1. Start portmap or rpcbind service on the NFS server

    On most Linux distributions, portmap can be started using the following command:

    /etc/init.d/portmap start
    

    On some distributions where portmap has been replaced by rpcbind, run the following command:

    /etc/init.d/rpcbind start
    

    After starting portmap or rpcbind, gluster NFS server needs to be restarted.

  2. Stop another NFS server running on the same machine

    Such an error is also seen when there is another NFS server running on the same machine but it is not the Gluster NFS server. On Linux systems, this could be the kernel NFS server. Resolution involves stopping the other NFS server or not running the Gluster NFS server on the machine. Before stopping the kernel NFS server, ensure that no critical service depends on access to that NFS server's exports.

    On Linux, kernel NFS servers can be stopped by using either of the following commands depending on the distribution in use:

    /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server stop
    /etc/init.d/nfs stop
    
  3. Restart Gluster NFS server

mount command fails with NFS server failed error.

mount command fails with following error

mount: mount to NFS server '10.1.10.11' failed: timed out (retrying).

Perform one of the following to resolve this issue:

  1. Disable name lookup requests from NFS server to a DNS server

    The NFS server attempts to authenticate NFS clients by performing a reverse DNS lookup to match hostnames in the volume file with the client IP addresses. There can be a situation where the NFS server either is not able to connect to the DNS server or the DNS server is taking too long to responsd to DNS request. These delays can result in delayed replies from the NFS server to the NFS client resulting in the timeout error seen above.

    NFS server provides a work-around that disables DNS requests, instead relying only on the client IP addresses for authentication. The following option can be added for successful mounting in such situations:

    option rpc-auth.addr.namelookup off

    Note: Remember that disabling the NFS server forces authentication of clients to use only IP addresses and if the authentication rules in the volume file use hostnames, those authentication rules will fail and disallow mounting for those clients.

    OR

  2. NFS version used by the NFS client is other than version 3

    Gluster NFS server supports version 3 of NFS protocol. In recent Linux kernels, the default NFS version has been changed from 3 to 4. It is possible that the client machine is unable to connect to the Gluster NFS server because it is using version 4 messages which are not understood by Gluster NFS server. The timeout can be resolved by forcing the NFS client to use version 3. The vers option to mount command is used for this purpose:

    mount -o vers=3
    

showmount fails with clnt_create: RPC: Unable to receive

Check your firewall setting to open ports 111 for portmap requests/replies and Gluster NFS server requests/replies. Gluster NFS server operates over the following port numbers: 38465, 38466, and 38467.

Application fails with "Invalid argument" or "Value too large for defined data type" error.

These two errors generally happen for 32-bit nfs clients or applications that do not support 64-bit inode numbers or large files. Use the following option from the CLI to make Gluster NFS return 32-bit inode numbers instead: nfs.enable-ino32 \<on|off>

Applications that will benefit are those that were either:

  • built 32-bit and run on 32-bit machines such that they do not support large files by default
  • built 32-bit on 64-bit systems

This option is disabled by default so NFS returns 64-bit inode numbers by default.

Applications which can be rebuilt from source are recommended to rebuild using the following flag with gcc:

-D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64