NFS Issue VER 5.0 rc11

I am reporting an issue which I have been having with NFS and ver 5.0 rc11.  First, a bit of background.

I have been using unRAID ver 5.0 since early May of 2012 when I converted from FreeNAS.  I don't recall what beta version I started with but I have used every beta version and rc version (with the exception of those which would not work with my hardware setup) since then and I have never seen this issue until rc11. 

I have three Netgear NTV550 HD Media Players which can either access my server via SMB or NFS.  The NFS-to-FreeNAS setup worked much better than the SMB-to-FreeNAS setup (FreeNAS SMB was unable to stream high bitrate Blu-rays without stuttering) so I just continued to use NFS when I changed over to my unRAID server. The actual streaming of data was been flawless on ALL beta and rc versions using NFS!

My unRAID server is setup with a share called 'Media' Which contains several folders:

Media

  |

  |- Blu-ray Movies

  |- DVD Movies

  |- Family DVD Videos

  |- Music

  |- Trailers

The issue that has come up in rc 11 is that when I first access this share (Media) the folder 'Blu-ray Movies' never shows up on any of the three NTV550's selection screens. If I go back one screen to where I select the share and come back in, the folder will be there.  I can consistently reproduce this issue by spinning down the data drives on the server and starting the NTV550 from its 'off condition' (actually a low power standby mode). 

Recently, I decided to further investigate this issue.  One thing that was starting to annoy my wife was having movies in two separate folders.  (She was having problems remembering if a movie was a Blu-ray or a DVD.) So I moved all of the movies in the 'DVD Movies' folder into the 'Blu-ray Movies' folder.  I then renamed the 'Blu-ray Movies' to 'All Movies'.  The share structure now looked like this:

Media

  |

  |- All Movies

  |- Family DVD Videos

  |- Music

  |- Trailers

The problem still existed-- now the 'All Movies' folder was missing.  I observed that the first folder name was always the one which was missing, so I decided to rename the 'All Movies' folder to 'Movies' giving the following structure: 

Media

  |

  |- Family DVD Videos

  |- Movies

  |- Music

  |- Trailers

Again the 'Movies' folder was missing-- so it was not just the first folder (alphabetically) .  The point of all this is that is that only one folder is missing and it does not matter what that is named, it is not displayed on the first initial access.  (I suspect that was the first folder that was created in the share--  changing its name should not change its actual position in the file table.  I can't tell for sure as the renaming of the folder has changed its date-time stamp.)

I have done some testing with SMB and I have not encountered the issue with SMB.  (By the way, the SMB implementation of unRAID does not seem to have the streaming issues that FreeNAS did.)    So it appears that the issue is limited to the NFS version that is in rc11.

Is a deal breaker?  I don't really think so-- but it is extremely annoying.  I could easily switch completely over to using only SMB and see if I have any issues.  (Remember that I also have the NTV550's in the equation also but that is another completely different set of issues!) 

What does "ls -la /mnt/user/" show?

What does "ls -la /mnt/user/" show?

root@Elsie1:~# ls -la /mnt/user/
total 0
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users 104 2012-09-25 16:25 ./
drwxr-xr-x 8 root   root    0 2013-02-18 15:30 ../
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users 192 2012-11-16 10:08 Data/
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users 160 2013-03-04 09:23 Media/

and for 'ls -la /mnt/user/Media'

root@Elsie1:~# ls -la /mnt/user/Media
total 0
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users 160 2013-03-04 09:23 ./
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users 104 2012-09-25 16:25 ../
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users 200 2012-05-03 10:36 Family\ DVD\ Videos/
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users 392 2013-03-03 13:48 Movies/
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users 136 2012-05-04 15:07 Music/
drwxrwxrwx 1 nobody users 136 2012-05-04 06:56 Trailers/

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=25739.0

Quite possibly it is the same issue showing its head in another way.  I see that you submitted your syslog to Tom as he requested.  Has he indicated that there was anything in them to indicate a problem? 

I really tend to suspect that we are seeing some minor issue that was 'added' into the version  of NFS that was included in Slackware version 3.4.26 that Tom used when he compiled rc11.  As I said, we (wife and I)  did not see this behavior prior to rc11 and I have certainly been through a pile of them. 

I often have to reboot my OpenELEC boxes in order to see the files, since updating to rc11.

Also, the 'stale nfs handle' on my Ubuntu desktops is troubling me again since rc11.

Frank->

sadly no reply from Tom.

The problem still persists on my main server.  I have recently updated my 'test bed' as shown below in my signature.  I built up a share on this test bed which was identical in structure as on the main server.  I even populated it it with some files but, obviously, I could put 3TB of files on a 1TB server.  The test bed server DOES NOT have the issue.  I tried disabling folder caching in Simple Features but that did not help.

Updated the thread with this post more for record purposes than to indicate that I had found some great solution or insight in to the issue. 

Is there any way to "factory reset" your media player?  This issue is almost certainly being caused by the media player using invalid NFS file handles.

Is there any way to "factory reset" your media player?  This issue is almost certainly being caused by the media player using invalid NFS file handles.

I can do this but it requires setting the Netgear box back up.  I will do it but I have company here today and it will have to wait until much later today or tomorrow. 

Is there any way to "factory reset" your media player?  This issue is almost certainly being caused by the media player using invalid NFS file handles.

After a bit more snooping around using the WebGUI for the NTV550, I did find some more information on the Linux version used.  The Kernel version was listed as 2.6.22.19-27-t3bd; #24. The firmware release (NTV550) is 3.2.27 which is the FINAL one that Netgear will be releasing.  (The rc11 release has no issues when compared to that one!) 

I did do the Factory Reset and reentered all of the information to get all of the shares back onto the NTV550.  I turned off the folder caching on the main server and rebooted the main server.  I made sure that all drives were spun down. 

I now began the testing.  (Remember the problem only occurs under certain circumstances and I was not sure what the exact conditions were for it to crop up.) After trying a number of different things, I found that I can always induce the problem (One directory missing-- 'All Movies'--) by unplugging the NTV550, re-powering it and using NFS as the FIRST access to the main server. (For all subsequent accesses, it works properly)  I now tried the same procedure using the NFS link for the test bed server.  It does not happen with the test bed! 

On very interesting thing is that the missing directory is the only one whose shares span more than one drive.  It must be noted that the test bed server has only one data disk so, obviously, none of the shares can span more than one disk. 

I have attached a syslog should you need it. 

==============

syslog2.zip