[Nix-dev] NFS stale locks

[Tony White]

2009/4/10 Tony White <tonywhite100 at googlemail.com>:
> 2009/4/9 Marc Weber <marco-oweber at gmx.de>:
>>> Thanks Marc,
>>> I've re-installed because something I'd done had really screwed things
>>> up, I wouldn't normally but my level of understanding is not quite
>>> good enough yet.
>>> I was wrong, It wasn't stale locks, It was "Stale NFS file handle."
>>> I think it had something to do with subscribing to a specific channel,
>>> Updating the expressions from it and then removing the channel.
>>
>> So it was not related to this?
>> http://sysunconfig.net/unixtips/stale_nfs.txt
>>
>> Marc Weber
>> _______________________________________________
>> nix-dev mailing list
>> nix-dev at cs.uu.nl
>> https://mail.cs.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>>
>
> Yes, It was that although I'm not sure why or where nfs is being used.
> Does NixOS's configuration tools use nfs somehow?
> I can't see how, Looks like subversion is used but not nfs?
> I certainly didn't try to create any nfs mount points.
> Slightly puzzled.
>
> Tony
>

I've got some better info on this now and how to fix it because it
happened again :

sh-3.2$ sudo nixos-rebuild switch
obtaining list of Nix archives at
`http://nixos.org/releases/nixpkgs/channels/nixpkgs-unstable/MANIFEST.bz2'...
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
6087 store paths in manifest
error: statting `/nix/var/nix/profiles/system': Stale NFS file handle
error: statting `/nix/var/nix/profiles/system': Stale NFS file handle

Looks to be the same problem as this :

http://stoilis.blogspot.com/2005/05/stale-nfs-handle.html

However the issue disappeared after I booted into my other Linux
install and issued fsck on the partition, Answering yes to all
questions and there were lots of problems.

I'll be able to work out if my other Linux install (Mandriva) Is
causing the file system corruption when it's mounting or writing to
the filesystem or whether it's because the system isn't powering down
cleanly, Over time.
I'll keep my eye on it and investigate further if I can pin point the
precise reason for the corruption.

Thanks for the help so far, I'm sure that trying to get nixos-rebuild
to workout that it's file system corruption causing this issue and
then setting and notifying of an fsck job at next boot would be a
great idea but seriously difficult or even near to impossible to
implement.

At least I know what's going on now, Better the devil you know.

Tony