1

I am trying to access an NFS share using macOS High Sierra and I am having momentary system lock-up issues regardless of whether I use Finder or the command line to copy files to the share.

For example, a write operation in Finder will start, write up to a few hundred megabytes and then momentarily freeze before continuing on. During the freeze, I sometimes get a spinning wheel and the system becomes unresponsive.

I've tried NFS3/4 on the server side, doesn't seem to be tied to a particular version. I've also mounted the share using the command line and tried various options (e.g., nolocks, local_lock) to no avail.

There are a number of articles on the internet that discuss various issues with NFS and macOS, but most of these are dated and don't describe the problem I see (when it is actually transferring, its fast - so it's more about the locks-ups which last a couple of seconds).

Any ideas what might be causing this - or optimal settings for High Sierra and NFS?

Update: Looks to be correlated with Kerberos. Disabling Kerberos solves the problem. I did a Wireshark capture (with Kerberos enabled) to capture the issue, screencap below.

enter image description here

The issue starts at index 252292 (highlighted row). You can see the delay in the timestamp column (2nd column, in seconds). There are repeated "RENEW" commands after a "CLOSE" command. The IP 10.60.6.26 is the client and 10.60.8.23 is the NFS server.

Kerberos is implemented using FreeIPA, with the NFS server (a storage appliance) and the client authenticating against IPA.

Given the timestamps, it seems likely for this to be a client issue (the server is responsive but the client waits several seconds to resend "RENEW").

Any idea on how to further diagnose this issue or a fix are greatly appreciated.

1
  • It's not clear where did you disable Kerberos: the server? Or did you exclude it somehow when mounting the NFS share on the client?
    – dimitarvp
    Jan 5, 2021 at 13:34

0

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .