RE: multiple servers per automount

["Ogden, Aaron A." <aogden@unocal.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Kent [mailto:raven@themaw.net] 
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 8:09 PM
To: Mike Waychison
Cc: Ogden, Aaron A.; autofs mailing list; nfs@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [autofs] multiple servers per automount

>> The maximum number of plain pseudo-block device filesystems on a
given
>> filesystem is limitted to 256. (This includes proc, autofs, nfs..).
>>
>> This is because pseudo-block filesystems all use major 0, and each
have
>> a different minor (thus the 256 limit).
>>
>> There are however patches floating around (look at SuSe's kernels,
I'm
>> not sure about RH) that allow n majors to be used (default 5).  This
>> gives you 1280 mounts, a big step up :)
>>
>
> But as Aaron and I know things go pear shaped at just shy of 800
mounts
> with RedHat kernels. They have the more-unnamed patch.
>
> So this would indicate that even if there is a device system that can
> increase the number of unnamed devices that subsystems like NFS cannot
> handle this many mounts.

Maybe.  I'm not 100% certain though.  Currently I am holding steady at
710 active mounts, I am going to write a little script to mount more in
small increments, ie. read a list of ~1000 mountpoints from /home, mount
a few of them, check the filesystems, and repeat... this way I will know
exactly where things break down.