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Date:      Fri, 15 Oct 1999 12:48:14 -0400 (EDT)
From:      "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
To:        marc@oldserver.demon.NL (Marc Schneiders)
Cc:        cjclark@home.com, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org (FreeBSD Questions)
Subject:   Re: umountall requests
Message-ID:  <199910151648.MAA03447@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9910151229520.1040-100000@propro.oldserver.demon.nl> from Marc Schneiders at "Oct 15, 1999 12:37:31 pm"

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Marc Schneiders wrote,
> On Thu, 14 Oct 1999, Crist J. Clark wrote:
> 
> > I have an old 486 
> > [...]
> > using it for /usr/obj space when a machine does
> > not have local disk space for a make world. I NFS mount these on other 
> > machines to access them.
> > 
> > [...]
> 
> > On the client I get messages like,
> > 
> > Oct 13 00:48:39 pc252 /kernel: nfs server backmail:/u1/obj-pc252: not responding
> > Oct 13 00:48:39 pc252 /kernel: nfs server backmail:/u1/obj-pc252: is alive again
> > [...]
> > 
> > Over the course of a 24 hour period. There are no indications of
> > network problems.
> > 
> > On the server, I am getting a much more perplexing message,
> > 
> > Oct 13 09:15:09 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 123.45.67.89 from unprivileged port
> > Oct 13 09:15:11 backmail last message repeated 3 times
> > B
> > Oct 13 10:13:06 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 123.45.67.89 from unprivileged port
> > Oct 13 10:13:06 backmail last message repeated 2 times
> > 
> > Where 123.45.67.89 happens to be the IP address of the server (backmail)
> > itself. Note that the times are not correlated between these two sets
> > of messages on the different machines. I really do not have any idea what
> > this second set of messages means.
> >
> > [...]
> > 
> > And second, what do those messages on the server mean? Why is it sending
> > umountall requests to itself from an unprivileged port?
> 
> It isn't. I have those messages as well at times. And these happen to be
> the times that I reboot another box. Apparently this other box sends a
> umountall request over the net when shutting down. Or in any case some
> message, which is understood by the FreeBSD box as coming from itself at
> one of its own ports ... Fortunately it doesn't do what is requested :-)
> 
> This has been mentioned before on this list. I have seen no replies. Anyone?

This hint helped me to find a rather striking correlation. First, the
product of 'grep umountall /var/log/messages' on the machine with the
mysterious messages,

Oct  6 09:12:29 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port
Oct  7 08:54:56 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port
Oct  8 09:41:23 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port
Oct 11 09:00:38 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port
Oct 11 09:51:44 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port
Oct 12 09:12:08 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port
Oct 12 11:32:36 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port
Oct 13 09:15:09 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port
Oct 13 10:13:06 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port
Oct 14 09:34:30 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port
Oct 14 10:54:54 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port
Oct 15 08:59:44 backmail mountd[6907]: umountall request from 198.138.229.3 from unprivileged port

Now, I looked to see if I got such messages on another FreeBSD
machine with mountd listening for requests. It has no such messages
(it is 2.2.8-STABLE, the machine with messages is 3.3-STABLE), but
something caught my eye,

Oct  6 09:16:12 newmail timed[94]: measure: curly.scitec.com did not respond
Oct  7 08:55:31 newmail timed[94]: measure: lucy.scitec.com did not respond
Oct  8 09:45:16 newmail timed[94]: measure: lucy.scitec.com did not respond
Oct 11 08:59:14 newmail timed[94]: measure: lucy.scitec.com did not respond
Oct 11 09:55:37 newmail timed[94]: measure: curly.scitec.com did not respond
Oct 12 09:14:31 newmail timed[94]: measure: lucy.scitec.com did not respond
Oct 12 11:34:31 newmail timed[94]: measure: curly.scitec.com did not respond
Oct 13 09:18:40 newmail timed[94]: measure: lucy.scitec.com did not respond
Oct 13 10:16:48 newmail timed[94]: measure: curly.scitec.com did not respond
Oct 14 09:38:30 newmail timed[94]: measure: lucy.scitec.com did not respond
Oct 14 10:54:31 newmail timed[94]: measure: pc252.scitec.com did not respond
Oct 15 09:01:12 newmail timed[94]: measure: lucy.scitec.com did not respond

(You actually get three reports spaced by 4 minutes for each
unresponsive timed slave, but I have cut the second two for clarity.)
As one quickly sees, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the
umountall requests and machines leaving the network. curly and lucy
are SGIs, an Indigo at IRIX 6.2 and an Octane at IRIX 6.5,
respectively. They are brought down regularly for OS/HDD switches as
one can see above. pc252 is a fellow FreeBSD 2.2.8-STABLE machine that
needed to boot into Windoze for a few hours (bleh).

Given the close correlation of machines shutting down with umountall
messages, I feel confident that they are the initial cause for the
message. Given the wide variety of hardware and OSs causing the
messages, I have to believe the backmail machine is the one behaving
inappropriately, and not malformed or otherwise erronious output from
the other machines. Finally, I should note that no other NFS servers,
IRIX or FreeBSD 2.2.8-STABLE produce such messages.

Is this a bug in the 3.x mountd? Or is another process doing something
bad and mountd is properly logging the problem and ignoring it?... Or
am I completely off?
-- 
Crist J. Clark                           cjclark@home.com


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