select() returns EINVAL if you try to feed it a value of FD_SETSIZE greater
that 256. You can apparently adjust this by specifying a larger value of
FD_SETSIZE when configuring your kernel. However, if you set the maximum
number of open file descriptors per process to some value greater than
the FD_SETSIZE value that select() expects, many selects() within the RPC
library code will be botched because _rpc_dtablesize() will return
invalid numbers. This is to say that it will return the upper descriptor
table size limit which can be much higher than 256. Unless select() is
prepared to expect this 'unusually' high value, it will fail. (A good
example of this can be seen with NIS enabled: if you type 'unlimit' at
the shell prompt and then run any command that does NIS calls, you'll
be bombarded with errors from clnttcp_create().)
A temporary fix for this is to clamp the value returned by _rpc_dtablesize()
at FD_SETSIZE (as defined in <sys/types.h> (256)). I suppose the Right
Thing would be to provide some mechanism for select() to dynamically
adjust itself to handle FD_SETSIZE values larger than 256, but it's a
bit late in the game for that. Hopefully 256 file descriptors will be enough
to keep RPC happy for now.
Obtained from: Casper H. Dik (by vay of Usenet)
Small patch to help improve NIS rebinding times (among other things):
>From: casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik)
>Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.sys.sun.admin
>Subject: FIX for slow rebinding of NIS.
>Summary: a small change in libc makes life with NIS a lot easier.
>Message-ID: <1992Jan17.173905.11727@fwi.uva.nl>
>Date: 17 Jan 92 17:39:05 GMT
>Sender: news@fwi.uva.nl
>Organization: FWI, University of Amsterdam
>Lines: 138
>Nntp-Posting-Host: halo.fwi.uva.nl
Have you been plagued by long waits when your NIS server is rebooted?
READ ON!
Sun has a patch, but the README says:
********************* WARNING ******************************
This is a new version of ypbind that never uses the NIS
binding file to cache the servers binding. This will have
the effect of fixing the current symptom. However, it might
degrade the overall performance of the system when the
server is available. This is most likely to happen on an
overloaded server, which will cause the network to produce
a broadcast storm.
*************************************************************
Therefor, I have produced another fix.
o What goes wrong.
When the NIS server is rebooted, ypserv will obtain different ports
to listen for RPC requests. All clients will continue to use the old
binding they obtained earlier. The NIS server will send ICMP dst unreachable
messages for the RPC requests that arrive at the old port. These ICMPs
are dropped on the floor and the client code will continue sending the
requests until the timer has expired. The small fix at the end of this
message will pick up these ICMP messages and deliver them to the RPC layer.
o Before and after.
I've tested this on some machines and this is the result:
(kill and restart ypserv on the server)
original% time ypmatch user passwd
user:....
0.040u 0.090s 2:35.64 0.0% 0+126k 0+0io 0pf+0w (155 seconds elapsed time)
fixedhost% time ypmatch user passwd
user:....
0.050u 0.050s 0:10.20 0.9% 0+136k 0+0io 0pf+0w (10 seconds elapsed time)
Rebinding is almost instantaneous.
o Other benefits.
RPC calls that use UDP as transport will no longer time out but
will abort much sooner. (E.g., the remote host is unreachable or
111/udp is filtered by an intermediate router)
command available yet.
Changed an entry in getprcent.3 from rpcinfo(8C) to rpcinfo(8).
Changed an entry in getrpcport.3 from 3R to 3.
Changed two entries in rpc.3 from 3N to 3.
