NAME¶

sm-notify - send reboot notifications to NFS peers

SYNOPSIS¶

/usr/sbin/sm-notify [-dfn] [-m minutes] [-v name] [-p notify-port] [-P path]

DESCRIPTION¶

File locks are not part of persistent file system state. Lock state is thus lost when a host reboots.

Network file systems must also detect when lock state is lost because a remote host has rebooted. After an NFS client reboots, an NFS server must release all file locks held by applications that were running on that client. After a server reboots, a client must remind the server of file locks held by applications running on that client.

For NFS version 2 and version 3, the Network Status Monitor protocol (or NSM for short) is used to notify NFS peers of reboots. On Linux, two separate user-space components constitute the NSM service:

sm-notify

A helper program that notifies NFS peers after the local system reboots

rpc.statd

A daemon that listens for reboot notifications from other hosts, and manages the list of hosts to be notified when the local system reboots

The local NFS lock manager alerts its local rpc.statd of each remote peer that should be monitored. When the local system reboots, the sm-notify command notifies the NSM service on monitored peers of the reboot. When a remote reboots, that peer notifies the local rpc.statd, which in turn passes the reboot notification back to the local NFS lock manager.

NSM OPERATION IN DETAIL¶

The first file locking interaction between an NFS client and server causes the NFS lock managers on both peers to contact their local NSM service to store information about the opposite peer. On Linux, the local lock manager contacts rpc.statd.

rpc.statd records information about each monitored NFS peer on persistent storage. This information describes how to contact a remote peer in case the local system reboots, how to recognize which monitored peer is reporting a reboot, and how to notify the local lock manager when a monitored peer indicates it has rebooted.

An NFS client sends a hostname, known as the client's caller_name, in each file lock request. An NFS server can use this hostname to send asynchronous GRANT calls to a client, or to notify the client it has rebooted.

The Linux NFS server can provide the client's caller_name or the client's network address to rpc.statd. For the purposes of the NSM protocol, this name or address is known as the monitored peer's mon_name. In addition, the local lock manager tells rpc.statd what it thinks its own hostname is. For the purposes of the NSM protocol, this hostname is known as my_name.

There is no equivalent interaction between an NFS server and a client to inform the client of the server's caller_name. Therefore NFS clients do not actually know what mon_name an NFS server might use in an SM_NOTIFY request. The Linux NFS client records the server's hostname used on the mount command to identify rebooting NFS servers.

OPTIONS¶

-d

Keeps sm-notify attached to its controlling terminal and running in the foreground so that notification progress may be monitored directly.

-f

Send notifications even if sm-notify has already run since the last system reboot.

-m retry-time

Specifies the length of time, in minutes, to continue retrying notifications to unresponsive hosts. If this option is not specified, sm-notify attempts to send notifications for 15 minutes. Specifying a value of 0 causes sm-notify to continue sending notifications to unresponsive peers until it is manually killed.

Notifications are retried if sending fails, the remote does not respond, the remote's NSM service is not registered, or if there is a DNS failure which prevents the remote's mon_name from being resolved to an address.

Hosts are not removed from the notification list until a valid reply has been received. However, the SM_NOTIFY procedure has a void result. There is no way for sm-notify to tell if the remote recognized the sender and has started appropriate lock recovery.

-n

Prevents sm-notify from updating the local system's NSM state number.

-p port

Specifies the source port number sm-notify should use when sending reboot notifications. If this option is not specified, a randomly chosen ephemeral port is used.

This option can be used to traverse a firewall between client and server.

-P, --state-directory-path pathname

Specifies the pathname of the parent directory where NSM state information resides. If this option is not specified, sm-notify uses /var/lib/nfs/statd by default.

After starting, sm-notify attempts to set its effective UID and GID to the owner and group of this directory.

-v ipaddr | hostname

Specifies the network address from which to send reboot notifications, and the mon_name argument to use when sending SM_NOTIFY requests. If this option is not specified, sm-notify uses a wildcard address as the transport bind address, and uses the my_name recorded when the remote was monitored as the mon_name argument when sending SM_NOTIFY requests.

The ipaddr form can be expressed as either an IPv4 or an IPv6 presentation address. If the ipaddr form is used, the sm-notify command converts this address to a hostname for use as the mon_name argument when sending SM_NOTIFY requests.

This option can be useful in multi-homed configurations where the remote requires notification from a specific network address.

SECURITY¶

The sm-notify command must be started as root to acquire privileges needed to access the state information database. It drops root privileges as soon as it starts up to reduce the risk of a privilege escalation attack.

During normal operation, the effective user ID it chooses is the owner of the state directory. This allows it to continue to access files in that directory after it has dropped its root privileges. To control which user ID rpc.statd chooses, simply use chown(1) to set the owner of the state directory.

ADDITIONAL NOTES¶

Lock recovery after a reboot is critical to maintaining data integrity and preventing unnecessary application hangs.

To help rpc.statd match SM_NOTIFY requests to NLM requests, a number of best practices should be observed, including:

The UTS nodename of your systems should match the DNS names that NFS peers use to contact them

The UTS nodenames of your systems should always be fully qualified domain names

The forward and reverse DNS mapping of the UTS nodenames should be consistent

The hostname the client uses to mount the server should match the server's mon_name in SM_NOTIFY requests it sends

Unmounting an NFS file system does not necessarily stop either the NFS client or server from monitoring each other. Both may continue monitoring each other for a time in case subsequent NFS traffic between the two results in fresh mounts and additional file locking.

On Linux, if the lockd kernel module is unloaded during normal operation, all remote NFS peers are unmonitored. This can happen on an NFS client, for example, if an automounter removes all NFS mount points due to inactivity.

FILES¶

/var/lib/nfs/statd/sm

directory containing monitor list

/var/lib/nfs/statd/sm.bak

directory containing notify list

/var/lib/nfs/statd/state

NSM state number for this host

/proc/sys/fs/nfs/nsm_local_state

kernel's copy of the NSM state number

SEE ALSO¶

rpc.statd(8), nfs(5), uname(2), hostname(7)

RFC 1094 - "NFS: Network File System Protocol Specification"
RFC 1813 - "NFS Version 3 Protocol Specification"
OpenGroup Protocols for Interworking: XNFS, Version 3W - Chapter 11

AUTHORS¶

Olaf Kirch <okir@suse.de>
Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@oracle.com>