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Recently the NAS we use has been switched from 32bit to 64bit inodes on a nfs mount. Unfortunately we have legacy code which does not play nice with this. After some panicked googling I came across this article, which has been very useful:

https://www.mjr19.org.uk/sw/inodes64.html

Following this guide, adding the setting "options nfs enable_ino64=0" >> /etc/modprobe.conf and forcing the option (to negate a reboot) echo -n N > /sys/module/nfs/parameters/enable_ino64 works fine on 28 of the 31 systems.

But three of the oldest ones, instead of giving 32bit inodes, now show double, I think they are showing unsigned 64bit values instead of signed, and certainly not 32bit.

No changes

Box1:~> $ ls -lid /hold
9269037378989466310 drwxrws--- 10 user group 12288 2021-02-24 08:32 /hold

Setting applied successfully

Box2:~> $  ls -lid /hold
2162040485 drwxrws--- 10 user group 12288 Feb 24 08:32 /hold

Setting applied, fault

Box3$  ls -lid /hold
18446744071576624805 drwxrws--- 10 user group 12288 24. Feb 09:32 /hold

This is the mount in fstab

server:/location/on/server/hold /hold nfs soft,bg 0 0

All of the problem machines are running Suse Enterprise 11, service pack 1. While the rest are either Service pack 2 or 4. There is a long term plan to upgrade them all to service pack 4, and a very long term plan to move of the problem software, so that we can jump to a modern OS. But they are a long time off.

Does anyone recognise the bug, accepting that it's very old (from wikipedia: SP1, 2010-06-02. SP2, 2012-02-15) does anyone know/remember the fix that doesn't involve a complete upgrade? Note, I do have the SP0, 1 & 2 install disks.

Thanks in advance.

Stripy42
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  • I hope by "long term" you mean "five years ago". Getting those machines up to SP4 should be your top priority. Holy carp, how did something so important get left so long? And I hope by "very long term" you mean "next week", but somehow I disbelieve it. – Michael Hampton Feb 25 '21 at 00:09
  • Hi @MichaelHampton, my feelings exactly! I've taken over an area that used to be run by these now retired old school guys, who preferred the "if it works-don't touch" approach. I've spent the last few years getting rid of the even older HP-UX, Windows NT, and PDP 11 systems. I kid you not, I gave it to a Museum! – Stripy42 Feb 25 '21 at 08:47
  • I'm hunting through the SUSE Update advisories from before 2012. Not much there, I guess they cleared it out. The only thing left are two Kernel security updates. If I can find the required files I'll try applying those fixes. https://www.suse.com/support/update/announcement/2012/suse-su-20120153-2/ https://www.suse.com/support/update/announcement/2012/suse-su-20120153-1/ These machines have never seen an patch in their lives, so this will be fun! – Stripy42 Feb 25 '21 at 09:25

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