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I have the following problem.

We have the partition /iAmAPartition mounted on ~100 client machines via NFS. i want to move the partition somewhere else (because it's a mess) and have the files recreated automatically (the application is taking care of that).

the problem is that some of the clients are using the exported data as input in scripts.

the actual question is .... what can i do in order to make this change without breaking something ? if i stop the nfs daemon, what will happen to the clients ? will they stall or not ?

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  • Can you clarify your question? I don't understand what "move the partition somewhere else" means.
    – sciurus
    Mar 16, 2011 at 2:28

1 Answer 1

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What will happen when you stop NFS is complicated and depends on the way the NFS partition is mounted on their machines (what options were used to mount).

It would be foolish to attempt to do this during business hours and you should schedule an outage. This give you some breathing room if something does go down or wrong due to unforeseen circumstances.

Make sure you let the users at least know you are making changes that could cause an outage.

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  • For many reasons, the next maintenance window will be in a few months, so that's not an option :<. the exporting parameters are (ro,sync,root_squash,no_subtree_check,fsid=1) Mar 15, 2011 at 21:31
  • regardless of maintenance windows, you should make sure to let your users know that you are moving the nfs share.
    – Mike
    Mar 15, 2011 at 21:35
  • Also if you change the mounting point of the share you are going to break any connections to the server when the nfs service is restarted. You could alias the share to a directory then share that so it appears to be coming from the same share to the user.
    – Mike
    Mar 15, 2011 at 21:37
  • Good point, but no, i don't intent to change the mounting point. if the client is constantly reading a file named "foo", in case that i delete the file probably the application will crash, but what will happen to the nfs ? will it stall ? Mar 15, 2011 at 21:43
  • If the client has the nfs mounted, and you turn off the server, the nfs connection will hang. The client os will hang on any read/writes to the share and should resume when the nfs share become available. This will break something.
    – Mike
    Mar 15, 2011 at 22:02

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