Subject: Pine hangs some NFS reads/writes

From: Paul A Beltrani <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 11:47:06 -1000

Problem overview:
When Pine attempts to read or write a mail box file in users
home directory that is mounted via NFS, it hangs indefinitely
and needs to be killed by root.

Software details:
Pine 3.96 on Solaris 2.5.1

Problem details:
Our user home directories are, for the most part, stored on a
central machine and autmounted to /home/~ as necessary.

When pine attempts to access a mailbox file in a user's HOME
directory, eg. reading ~/mail/sent-mail or writing ~/dead.letter,
it hangs indefinitely with a slow spinning baton prompt.

This ONLY happens when the user's home directory is mounted from
a separate server.  It does not happen if the user's home
directory is on the same machine the user is logged into, even
though it may be automounted to /home/~ from another location
on that machine.

Also, it NEVER happens when writing .pinerc, regardless of where
the users home directory is mounted from.

I suspect there is some problem with file locking on NFS mounted
directories.

A search of the Pine Discussion Forum Archives shows that
others have posted similar problems.  However, I haven't found
any responses that contained a solution. 

Does anyone have a solution or suggestion regarding this problem.

  - Paul Beltrani
    Oceanic Imaging Consultants