Problems with PC-NFS, hanging the PC

[Mike Thompson]

Many moons ago (well actually it's only about 1 moon ago) I posted a
request for help that I had with our PC's running PC-NFS 3.0 hanging
(locking up so tight that only a hardware reset would break them out of
it). I got many replies and the answer to my question and I did intend to
post a summary to the net, but push came to shove and I forgot. Until
today when someone sent me mail asking if I'd gotten an answer to my
question and if so could I tell them what the answer is seeing how they
were having the same problem. So here is my summary of other peoples'
replies to my plea for help:

Of the dozen+ replies I received most suggested upgrading to the most
recient version of PC-NFS (most seemed to think that this was 3.0.1 but
some mentioned 3.1, the impression I get is that anything beyond 3.0.0
will fix the problem).  A couple of replies I received suggested that I
needed to turn off Xon/Xoff flow control, from the telnet setup, this was
something we had already done here altho it had caused some people
problems previously.  One person mentioned how by watching the ethernet he
had witnessed large numbers of acknowledgment packets being transmitted
during these episodes, and that he found that the PC would eventually
return to normal (i.e. >5 minutes wait). I lost this letter so I'm not
sure of the exact details of this one.  One reply I got that did not
suggest upgrading did suggest that I go to a third party software product
(actually I suppose that is a type of upgrade:-)): 

In his letter mcanally at ctc.contel.com (Todd McAnally) says: 

|I talked to Sun recently about PC-NFS.  I was trying to correct a similar,
|but much more severe problem.  The first thing that they came up with is
|that my 386 20MHz machine was too fast and I had to slow it down using the
|`mode' command.  I don't know if that applies to you or not.  A slow 386
|didn't suit me so I changed NFS software.  Now I'm using PC/TCP and
|Interdrive from 'ftp software'.  I like it a LOT more (mainly because it
|works).  Let me know if you want more info about the 'ftp software'
|products.