I have a fileserver in my network, with the storage accessible via NFS.
From one particular client machine, reading from this NFS share is really slow. Or rather, it stops all the time. The pattern goes like:
- Copy really fast for like 2 seconds
- Stop for approximately 18 seconds with no bits transferred (this is what I want to get rid of)
- Repeat from 1.
It is not the server: I can access NFS quickly from several other machines in the network.
It is not the network: See above. The one problematic machine is connected with a cable, so it's all good.
It is not the hardware in the problematic machine: I had Ubuntu 11.04 x86 installed, and then NFS worked well. The problem has appeared after I installed Ubuntu 11.04 x86-64. (I don't know what causes it, but as I say; it worked before. Now it doesn't)
It is not the mount options: I copied the relevant line in fstab from the x86-installation. I have also tried altering the mount options to no avail.
I can't see anything relevant-looking in dmesg or syslog.
I don't really know how to continue debugging this. What can cause nfs to behave like this? What tools can I use to determine what is causing the lock/stop? Help? :)