Coda File System

Re[2]: Codaclient A7 Win XP: Problems with large files?

From: Lothar May <l-may_at_gmx.de>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 01:34:05 +0100
Hello,

Thursday, March 28, 2002, 9:57:15 PM, you seemed to have written:

[...]
JH> Coda is using a 'soft' cachesize limit when you are writing to a file.

OK, that explains why the copying worked.

JH> But when refetching the file we know what the size is going to be. So
JH> here the client can be a lot stricter and it refuses to fetch the file.
JH> This could be the cause of the access fault in WinXP's kernel.

That sounds logical.

>> 10. I flushed the cache on the Windows client. I started an explorer
>> to have a look at h:, and for some reason the coda client tried to send
>> udp-packets to port 0 of the server, which were filtered by a
>> firewall. After that Windows crashed badly.

JH> Hmm, port 0, shouldn't happen but I think I've seen that before
JH> somewhere. Nothing in my email folders, it will probably hit me when I'm
JH> walking home tonight. The Windows crash is probably unrelated, except if
JH> the port 0 braindamage led venus to not being able to return the
JH> information of the root directory (i.e. what the kernel is supposed to
JH> mount at h: )

JH> Is this a cache flush or a venus/RVM reinit,

Hmmm, well, I did a cache flush *flushing*...

JH> No, any Coda client doesn't like files larger than the client cache. It
JH> is a result of the combination of whole file caching, and for not
JH> intercepting every single write call so that we can check what the
JH> kernel/user application is doing with a file that is being written
JH> to.

I understand that, I don't really like it, but I think I'll have to live
with it ;-). I thought to leave smaller files in the cache and large files
on the server (I mean files which can be larger than the cache).
Is it somehow possible to disable caching for certain files?

>> The same thing happened after I configured the cache size to 200000kb.

JH> What, the store working, but the subsequent copy-back failing? Or the
JH> packets to port 0 and the bad Windows crash? Venus doesn't use the
JH> larger cache-size until RVM has been reinitialized.

Oops sorry, my fault... I thought that flushing the cache would be
enough to reinit it. With a larger cache it does work, and I
don't get any error or crash or whatever.

>> One other thing I noticed was that I can't see anything on the coda
>> drive after I flushed the cache, even when I'm connected and there
>> are files on the server. I get a strange error message like "got an eof
>> signal".

JH> Flushing the cache is typically pretty nasty,

OK then, I didn't know that. It only says:
DANGER: all files will be lost, if disconnected.
-- and the client wasn't disconnected ;-).
Well, I won't "rush" any more...

Thanks for your help!

Best regards,
 Lothar
Received on 2002-03-28 19:37:01