ISODE Troubles

[michaelw at syacus.acus.oz.au]

I am trying to install ISODE-6.0 on a Sun using an NFS mounted disk.  The
'make' is taking exceedingly long time to complete (it has been 3 days now
and is still crawling along).  I suspect this has got something to do with
NFS.  I need some suggestions!

Our Configuration:

    a) The Server: a Unisys 6050 (Convergent Technology CTIX)
	   AT&T V.3
	   4 nfsd and 4 biod
    b) The Client: a Sun 3/60
	   SunOS 3.5
	   4 nfsd and 4 biod
	   Server's file system is mounted with timeo = 30; retrans = 6
		(we started to use the default timeo=7 and retrans=3 and
		 that was BAD!)

Our Situation:

    I am installing ISODE-6.0 on the client and due to available disk
    space I have to install ISODE-6.0 on the server's disk.

    I have observed the following:

    1) There is a massive number of retrans/timeouts on the client's side
       (approx. 10%).

    2) From the client, if I do a 'ls' of the directory that the 'make' is
       currently doing work in then I won't get any response for 5-10 minutes.
       In fact, I cannot even kill it from another terminal.  According to
       'ps' the job is in a Disk wait with PRIority -5 which means it is
       in a non-interruptible wait.

       (This happens a lot!!  Extremely annoying!)

    3) From the client, a long wait will occur for the following type of jobs.

       a) 'ar' of LARGE number of object files resident on the server's
	  disk and target the resulting library to the server's disk;
       b) 'ranlib' on those libraries;
       c) 'cp' of any file whose size exceeding 0.3 Mb (this is a rough guess)
	  from the server's disk to a different directory on the server's disk.

          The 'cp' executed on the server only takes about 13 seconds for a
	  1M file whereas it could take up to 2 hours (!!!) to 'cp' a file
	  from the client.

       Again, these jobs will appear to 'ps' to be in a Disk wait with
       PRIority -5.

    4) From the client, "NFS not responding still trying" message would come
       up but I can still 'ls' directories on the server or even edit files
       resident on the server.  (Sometimes, that message does mean what it
       means though.)

Our questions:

    1) Is there anyone with a similar problem?
    2) Would increasing the number of daemons help?  (Mind you no one else
       is using NFS apart from my 'make'.)
    3) Can this problem be fixed or do I have to sit here and suffer ?!

Thank you all.

Michaelw Wang            michaelw at syacus.acus.oz.au