CentOS - Jan 2007 - NFS 64-bit client crash with 32-bit server

I have an unusual scenario where a new 64-bit multi-core Opteron
Centos 4.4client crashes when writing a large file on a 32-bit NFS
server.  The
problem happens on the same client with either Centos 4.4 or SuSE 9.3 32-bit
NFS servers.  Additionally the problem is reproducible with another
identical 64-bit Centos 4.4 client.  I'm not certain that the problem is
tied to a 32-bit (as opposed to 64-bit) NFS server, but it doesn't happen on
a local file system.

The crash appears to be some sort of kernel panic, but I don't have the
details as physical access to the server isn't easy.  The crashes seem to
happen when creating files over 2GB in size, but there doesn' seem to be a
fixed size that triggers the problem.  Sometimes I can get file sizes as
high as 3GB before the crash, but it's ususally at the 2.3GB to 2.6GB range
that it happens.

Are there known issues with Centos 4.4 and NFS that I might be running into?

Thanks,
Tom
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I seem to have found the problem.  My client machines that were crashing
each had 32GB RAM.  During some previous testing, I had set a kernel
parameter (mem=4096) to limit the amount of system memory in my
grub.conffile and had forgotten about it.  It appears that having this
set somehow
triggers the system crashes when writing large files via NFS.

Is this a bug, or does anyone know if this behavior should have been
expected?

Thanks,
Tom


On 1/17/07, bigendian at gmail.com <bigendian at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> I have an unusual scenario where a new 64-bit multi-core Opteron Centos
> 4.4 client crashes when writing a large file on a 32-bit NFS server.  The
> problem happens on the same client with either Centos 4.4 or SuSE 9.332-bit
NFS servers.  Additionally the problem is reproducible with another
> identical 64-bit Centos 4.4 client.  I'm not certain that the problem
is
> tied to a 32-bit (as opposed to 64-bit) NFS server, but it doesn't
happen on
> a local file system.
>
> The crash appears to be some sort of kernel panic, but I don't have the
> details as physical access to the server isn't easy.  The crashes seem
to
> happen when creating files over 2GB in size, but there doesn' seem to
be a
> fixed size that triggers the problem.  Sometimes I can get file sizes as
> high as 3GB before the crash, but it's ususally at the 2.3GB to
2.6GBrange that it happens.
>
> Are there known issues with Centos 4.4 and NFS that I might be running
> into?
>
> Thanks,
> Tom
>
>
>
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