nfsd: Dropping request due to malloc failure!

[J. Bruce Fields]

On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 09:26:39PM +0200, Fabrice Coudert wrote:
> I'm experiencing small freeze when mounting nfsv4 share. When it occurs,  it 
> drop this line on the log :
> 
> May 21 21:06:53 babel kernel: [1305627.303164] nfsd: Dropping request due to 
> malloc failure!
> 
> Then, after 2 to 4 seconds, the mounting continues normally.
> 
> I dunno what to look next. 
> Any help will be a greatly appreciated.

Two to four seconds sounds kind of long, but I think there's not
necessarily anything seriously wrong here, if this is happening on the
very first mount on an otherwise inactive server.

Any delay is most likely happening in mountd (that message about
"dropping request" is misleading--in this case it probably just means
the kernel is waiting for mountd to do something).  So one way to find
out where the time's going might be to strace the mountd process with
timestamping turned on (e.g.,

	strace -r -p<pid of mountd> -ostrace_output.txt

Then scan through strace_output.txt for long delays.  Somebody else
might have a better suggestion....

--b.