NSS pools taking a long time to deactivate

  • 7009350
  • 14-Sep-2011
  • 30-Oct-2013

Environment

Novell Cluster Services
Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 (OES 2) Linux Support Pack 3
Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 (OES 2) Linux Support Pack 2
Novell Open Enterprise Server 11 (OES 11) Linux
Novell Open Enterprise Server 11 (OES 11) Linux Support Pack 1
Novell Storage Services

Situation

NSS Pools are taking several minutes to deactivate.
This can cause slow pool migrations when using Novell Cluster Services. (possibly comatose resources)

During the deactivating of the NSS pool you will see several messages in /var/log/messages similar to the following
Waiting for 2396 Inuse beasts to unlink
Waiting for 2396 Inuse beasts to unlink
Waiting for 2376 Inuse beasts to unlink
Waiting for 2370 Inuse beasts to unlink

Resolution

With the August 2011 OES2 patches there is a new NSS parameter"FastWriteOfMessyBeasts".  This will write this information out to disk when it happens and not wait until a sync or pool deactivation.

Turn this on by doing the following
  nsscon
  This will show that it is currently OFF
  nss /find=FastWriteOfMessyBeasts
            /(No)FastWriteOfMessyBeasts Enable/Disable fast update of messy files.
               [Value=OFF]
  This command turns it on.
  nss /FastWriteOfMessyBeasts

  Prove that it is ON.
  nss /find=FastWriteOfMessyBeasts
            /(No)FastWriteOfMessyBeasts Enable/Disable fast update of messy files.
               [Value=ON]
  exit


Make it persistent across reboots by adding it to the /etc/opt/novell/nss/nssstart.cfg file.
/FastWriteOfMessyBeasts