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From: andyw@skypoint.com (Andrew Walseth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: FreeBSD/Solaris 2.5 NFS problems?..
Date: 2 Jun 1997 02:39:01 -0500
Organization: SkyPoint Communications, Inc.
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.sys.sun.admin:87844 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:42385
Has anyone heard of problems NFS mounting between FreeBSD systems and
Suns using Solaris.. We have several Suns mounting a FreeBSD system and
the Solaris 2.4 systems have no problems but the Solaris 2.5 systems
intermittantly complain about the FreeBSD NFS server not responding..
I've changed the 2.5 systems mounting parameters to
bg,intr,noac,rsize=1024,wsize=1024,timeo=22 and while better the Solaris
2.5 systems still have problems.. particularly when moving large chunks of
files around.. All the while the Solaris 2.4 system mounts with no such
parameters and has no problems..
I found this in the FreeBSD FAQ.. is it possible that something like
this could be causing the problems?...
***********************************************
2.1.1 I want to install by NFS but I am having all kinds of problems
connecting to the Sun server where the files are.
There is an unusual problem when installing over NFS. This
solution may have been corrected in the documentation that comes
with FreeBSD and NetBSD, but if not, here it is.
The most common problem seems to be that FreeBSD (and by
inference NetBSD and all the other 4.4 based systems) do not
send out NFS requests over privileged ports. Sun's NFS
implementation (and others, once again by inference) expect
precisely the opposite. These systems will quietly fail if you
try to NFS to them.
The usual error message (which may ONLY appear in
/var/adm/messages) is "nfs_server: weak authentication, source
IP address=xx.xx.xx.xx"
SunOS is particularly insidious at this point. The mount
succeeds, but then everything else after that fails. This means
that your FreeBSD or NetBSD system will return an EACCESS error
whenever you try to grab a file from the NFS filesystem. The
solution (tested in FreeBSD) is to include the 'resvport' flag
like this:
<pre>
# mount -o resvport server:/fs /mnt_point
</pre>
or to use the -P flag (which does the same thing). See the
mount and mount_nfs man pages for the details.
In fact, the -P flag provides a solution to the FreeBSD NFS
installation problem. When prompted for server/filesystem, type
in the flag before the server/filesystem pair:
<pre>
-P server:/fs
</pre>
If you are using an 8-bit network card, and want to avoid the
ring buffer overflow problems that seem to come standard with
this class of cards, you can also include the "-r4096 -w4096"
flags between the -P and the server.
6.4.4 What does the message "Bad MNT RPC: RPC: Authentication error;
why = Client credential too weak" mean when I try to mount
something from another machine?
This problem is a standard NFS problem; it simply means that your
user number is not one of the ones that can mount this NFS.
Normally, you will get this message when you are trying to mount
a filesystem from a machine that allows 'root' to mount an NFS,
but limits other users.
Another documented problem with "client credentials being too
weak" is the dichotomy of SunOS and 4.4 based systems. SunOS,
and other commercial systems, do not allow NFS commands to come
in on anything but a reserved port. There are several places
that need to be addressed if weak credentials are a problem.
The first is the mount command. The mount itself may work, but
all references to files in the NFS will fail. This is usually
the most common symptom of this problem. The solution for this
is to either include the '-o resvport' keyword pair on the mount
command, or the -P option. In addition to the resvport command
on the mount, it may become important to include an NFS volume
in your fstab. If this is the case, you will need to ensure
that the resvport keyword is added on the mount line in the
fstab. Finally, if you are using the automounter, you will need
to make absolutely certain that you have included the resvport
option in your automount maps as the default.
*****************************************************
Andrew Walseth
Skypoint Communications
andyw@skypoint.com