/usr/etd/biod 0 'is very bad for your health'

[Onward Lam]

Recently had this experience:

Had a 6000/3.1 running as the only server in a small (< 5 machines) network.
Wanted to remove the 'biod's from startup, since they're client side
processes.
Went into SMIT, ... , Change number of nfsd and biod daemons

Set number of biods to 0

Told it to do it now, and at restart (ie. both)

Lo and behold, biod starts to fork itself 'infinitely', resulting in
MANY occurrences of /usr/etc/biod 0

System quickly runs out of process slots....  'press the small round
yellow button on the front panel'

EXCEPT

/usr/etc/biod 0  is invoked again at boot time

Has anybody seen this, can somebody confirm/deny it?

Incidentally, we didn't have bootable tapes/floppies/cd nearby.

This is what we eventually did:

When the Console login: prompt comes up:

VERY QUICKLY login as root
and EQUALLY QUICKLY did this : mv /usr/etc/biod /usr/etc/biodo ; sync

and hit the round yellow button again after a short while (for the sync).

Wanted to try the same for nfsd's, but sanity prevailed.


Onward Lam :-)
..!uunet!fsg!onward
"Of course, these are only my opinions, and not necessarily those of
 my employer"