Use NFSv3 as default protocol version?

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Use NFSv3 as default protocol version?

Hi,

I've found that using NFSv3 when connecting to linux NFS servers dramatically improves my NFS performance. For servers which I regulary connect to, I have a automount entry which explicitly has 'nfsv3' in the 'opts' property.

However, I connect to many different NFS servers (often using 'Connect to Server...' from Finder), and I would like the default protocol version to be v3. Experimentation seems to suggest that the default is v2.

Is it possible to change the default protocol version the NFS client uses to mount remote NFS volumes?

Thanks in advance

Dave Rigby

Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Feb 8, 2007 2:13 AM

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Answer 1

Camelot

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58,461 points

Feb 8, 2007 2:13 AM in response to Dave Rigby

Which version of the OS are your clients running?

All my systems (10.4.x) seem to default to NFSv3, and I haven't done anything special to force the issue.

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Answer 2

Dave Rigby Author

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Feb 8, 2007 2:36 AM in response to Camelot

My cient machine is running 10.4.8; connecting to a variety of *ix NFS servers. I haven't managed to confirum which NFS version a mountpoint is mounted as; I determined it was using v2 by default by remounting the saame mount with 'nfsv2', 'nfsv3' and without specifying an explicit version, and performing a simple benchmark test.

I got the same speeds for the 'nfsv2' and no explicit version; which specifying 'nfsv3' I got significantly faster (10x) performance.

Dave Rigby

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Answer 3

Camelot

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58,461 points

Feb 8, 2007 10:41 AM in response to Dave Rigby

Maybe this is somehow server-based.

I don't know about the Unix hosts you're using, but here's the stats dump from a Network Appliance NFS server in my network.

<pre class=command>NFS Report
NFSReport

Server rpc:
TCP:
calls badcalls nullrecv badlen xdrcall
1671598932 234 0 0 234

UDP:
calls badcalls nullrecv badlen xdrcall
4212797719 0 0 0 0

Server nfs:
calls badcalls
5884345580 0

Server nfs V2: (0 calls)
null getattr setattr root lookup readlink read
0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%
wrcache write create remove rename link symlink
0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%
mkdir rmdir readdir statfs
0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%

Read request stats (version 2)
0-511 512-1023 1K-2047 2K-4095 4K-8191 8K-16383 16K-32767 32K-65535 64K-131071
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Write request stats (version 2)
0-511 512-1023 1K-2047 2K-4095 4K-8191 8K-16383 16K-32767 32K-65535 64K-131071
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Server nfs V3: (5884345580 calls)
null getattr setattr lookup access readlink read
428 0% 787568909 13% 445852183 8% 808310852 14% 1668442734 28% 72730 0% 1512671740 26%
write create mkdir symlink mknod remove rmdir
508587746 9% 19512306 0% 1847171 0% 7566 0% 1290 0% 4196371 0% 35665 0%
rename link readdir readdir+ fsstat fsinfo pathconf
6326287 0% 2221 0% 8563147 0% 3097617 0% 109244848 2% 1815 0% 1954 0%
commit
0 0%

Read request stats (version 3)
0-511 512-1023 1K-2047 2K-4095 4K-8191 8K-16383 16K-32767 32K-65535 64K-131071
289941 318066 613806 1267998 20731375 1465823233 2184254 21420241 22826
Write request stats (version 3)
0-511 512-1023 1K-2047 2K-4095 4K-8191 8K-16383 16K-32767 32K-65535 64K-131071
118980838 1437708 2370663 29913215 72765558 274900729 612452 7237585 368998

</pre>

I haven't done anything client-side to control NFS v3 vs v2, but it's pretty clear that NFSv3 is what's being used.

Mac OS X (10.4.8)

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Answer 4

Camelot

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58,461 points

Feb 8, 2007 10:59 AM in response to Camelot

In any case, if you want to force NFSv3, you can add -o vers=3 to the mount command (or add 'vers=3' to the options field in fstab).

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Answer 5

Dave Rigby Author

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Feb 15, 2007 7:30 AM in response to Camelot

Thanks for that Camelot; that gives me a nice way to fix up my common (static) mounts.

Is it possible to change what version Finder uses when opening an nfs:// URL ?

Dave R

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