NFS Performance Tuning for HP-UX 11.0 and 11i Systems

nfs performance tuning for hp-ux 11.0 and 11i systems page 56

Notes:

Page 56July 22, 2002

What is rpc.mountd?

• Implements the MOUNT protocol on HP-UX systems

• Required to run on NFS servers

• User-space, single-threaded daemon

• Provides the initial filehandle for the root of the

exported filesystem to the clients who are granted

access

rpc.mountd

Before an NFS client can begin reading from or writing to files residing on an NFS

server, it first needs to contact the server and request permission to access the

exported filesystem. Once the server determines that the client is allowed to access

the mountpoint in question, it returns the filehandle for the root of the exported

filesystem.

These access requests are not handled by the NFS protocol directly (although this

functionality will become part of the NFS protocol in NFS PV4). Instead, a

separate MOUNT protocol was designed to run on the NFS server and process

these inquiries. On HP-UX systems, the MOUNT protocol is implemented via the

rpc.mountd daemon.

rpc.mountd is a single-threaded process that runs in user-space, as opposed to

being implemented in the kernel. That being the case, there is very little that can

be done to influence the performance of this daemon directly. However,

rpc.mountd performance can be affected by external factors such as hostname

resolution speed.