Environment
Novell NetWare 6.5 SP8
Novell NFS Gateway for NetWare 6.5
Situation
Hanging (i.e. lack of response from an NFS Gateway volume) or abends are experienced when backing up a NFS Gateway volume, or when using other tools which make use of SMS / TSAFS against a NFS Gateway volume.
Resolution
Problems such as hangs (and possibly abends) during SMS / TSAFS processes have been seen to be avoided by tuning TSAFS, to put a lighter load on the NFS Gateway volume. The tuning suggestions are given below. Note that these settings can slow down TSAFS work considerably. Also note that Novell does not officially support backing up an NFS Gateway volume (see TID 7003233 for more details). This information is provided as a courtesy and should not be construed as a statement of supportability.
The following commands are given at the console prompt on the server being backed up (or the "read" side of a Server Consolidation / Migration). These settings are persistent. Defaults are shown, so these items can be set back to normal afterwards.
tsafs /readthreadsperjob = 1
(default is 4)
tsafs /readaheadthrottle = 1
(default is 2)
tsafs /cachememorythreshold = 1
(default is 10)
tsafs /nocachingmode
(default is cachingmode)
Avoiding hangs or abends during heavy NFS Gateway work may also require recent updates be applied. As of this writing (June 16, 2009), this means either:
NetWare 6.5 SP8
NSS Update known as N65NSS8A.ZIP
NFS Gateway SP6
NFS Gateway update known as NFSGY658A.ZIP
-or-
NetWare 6.5 SP7
NSS Update known as N65NSS7B.ZIP
NFS Gateway SP5
NFS Gateway update known as NFSGY657B.ZIP
Be sure to read the NFS Gateway update readme for configuration recommendations, for avoiding hangs.