Re: make NFSv3 default now on diskless

Rick Macklem <rmacklem@uoguelph.ca> wrote:
> John-Mark Gurney <jmg@funkthat.com> wrote:
> > I just booted FreeBSD-current diskless, using NFS root, and I ended
> > up having issues because by default, NFS root is only v2.
> >
> > One of things that happened was disk space available was listed as
> > -138G, or -144830429K.  I assume this is because the server is reporting
> > TBs instead.
> Yes. NFSv2 uses 32bit sizes.
> 
> > If I mount via mount_nfs, the sizes are normal/correct because it mounts
> > v3.
> I believe most specify "nfsv3" in the "/" mount line of /etc/fstab on the
> remote root fs. Then, when the system does a "mount -u" to make it
> read/write it gets toggled to NFSv3.
> 
> > The other issue that I ran into is that NFSv2 can't access >4GB files
> > (or create them).
> As above, NFSv2 uses 32bit sizes.
>
> > Anyone object to adding BOOTP_NFSV3 to GENERIC?
> Well, that option only works when used with BOOTP_NFSROOT.
> The GENERIC configs for amd64, arm64,... use the other way.
> (Just to make it confusing, there are two different ways an NFS root
>  fs is set up.)
> See below.
>
> >  Or maybe making it a
> > tunable that defaults to set, because it seems a bit crazy to default
> > to v2 these days.
> I don't think changing the default to NFSv3 will be a problem.
> The reason it was NFSv2 was that,
> for some non-FreeBSD NFS servers, the NFSv3 file handle is different
> than the NFSv2 one.
>
> I added NFSv3 support to stand/libsa/nfs.c about 15years ago, so every
> system should be running the newer NFS code in the loader and be able
> to do NFSv3 booting.
> 
> > This option was added in 432aad0e in 1997 so that the nfs_diskless
> > structure didn't need to be filled out.  Does anything even
> > populate/fill it out anymore?  I saw code in i386/i386/locore.s that
> > does this, but it doesn't appear anywhere else.
> Yes. For "options NFS_ROOT" (the other way), the loader uses
> "stand/libsa/nfs.c" to acquire the remote file system's root file handle
> and fills it in. (See nfs_setup_diskless() in sys/nfs/nfs_diskless.c.)
> Looking at it, it appears to enable NFSv3 so long as it finds
> "boot.nfsroot.nfshandlelen" set.
Just to give you a little more on how these two methods work
(from my vague recollection..):
options NFS_ROOT
- Something (usually PXEBOOT) loaded the loader.
- The loader filled in some environment variables using the code in
   stand/libsa/nfs.c.
   boot.nfsroot.nfshandle - The root fs file handle
   boot.nfsroot.nfshandlelen - The length of above (if not set, use NFSv2)
   - plus some others to set up the network interface
- The kernel uses these environment variables to fill in nfs_diskless or
  nfsv3_diskless. This is done by the function called nfs_setup_diskless(),
  found in sys/nfs/nfs_diskless.c.

options BOOTP_NFSROOT
- Kernel gets loaded somehow.
- Kernel uses code in sys/nfs/bootp_subr.c to get the information
  needed (such as the root fs file handle) via BOOTP/DHCP.
  For this one, it will use NFSv2 unless "options BOOTP_NFSV3" was
  specified along with "options BOOTP_NFSROOT" in the kernel config.

If you are using the "NFS_ROOT" approach, I am surprised that you
get NFSv2, since the code in stand/libsa/nfs.c appears to do NFSv3 now
and sets "boot.nfsroot.nfshandlelen", unless I am mis-reading it?
- Maybe you can pop out into the loader and look at the environment
  variables with "show"?

rick

> There also appears to possibly be a way via mount options, but I can't
> see where it's documented to set them.
I think you just specify "nfsv3" as a mount option in the root fs
line in /etc/fstab on the root fs on the NFS server.

I don't think changing the default to NFSv3 will be a problem.
The hassle is testing the various cases, to make sure nothing
breaks. I have no diskless setup to do testing and I don't even know
when installs/upgrades actually replace the loader?

rick

--
  John-Mark Gurney                              Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."