Desktop freeze on NFS share failure

[Adam Batkin]

On 08/16/2015 07:01 AM, Rex Dieter wrote:
> Emmett Culley wrote:
>
>> Why does the desktop freeze whenever an NFS share fails?  I have set all
>> NFS mounts to soft,intr and yet, if I forget to unmount a share before
>> taking down the NFS server, my desktop freezes.
>>
>> Luckily I have Yakauke running, so I can at least get to a console.  But
>> of course the NFS mount cannot be umounted if it doesn't respond.
>>
>> Also I assumed the setting shares to intr, soft would prevent other
>> software from hanging if the share stops responding.  Is that not so?  Or
>> is there another setting I am not aware of?
>>
>> Any ideas how to prevent this from happening?
>
>
> It not *that* different to when a (mounted) disk stops working.  I'd
> recommend focusing on simply avoiding that situation.

I assume that you were referring to local (physical) disks.

Regardless, I disagree: Failure happens and software should at least 
*attempt* to be resilient.

If I'm asking Konqueror or Dolphin to access a broken mount (local or 
network) then I understand if it hangs (though that could be avoided 
too, even if it just displays a "loading" indicator since it obviously 
can't get any further).

But for general operations I would expect that nothing should hang. This 
is a solvable problem, and suggesting that people should avoid hung 
mounts isn't helpful given that usually (this particular situation 
excepted) they are totally unavoidable. A hung desktop is never acceptable.

-Adam Batkin