pfsd(1M)

NAME

pfsd, pfsd.rpc — PFS daemon

SYNOPSIS

pfsd [nservers] [ -v ] [ -o options ]

DESCRIPTION

pfsd starts the daemons that handle client filesystem requests. nservers is the number of file system server daemons to start. This number should be based on the load expected on this server. The load is defined by the number of mounted file systems.

Mounts are distributed in a round-robin fashion to the pfsd daemons.

It is recommended that the pfsd daemon be invoked by rc(1M). It must be invoked in the background.

The PFSdaemon is composed of two programs: pfsd and pfsd.rpc. The pfsd.rpc program should not be run directly. It is invoked by the pfsd program.

Options

-v

Verbose. Show version number, etc.

-o options

Specify filesystem options using a comma-separated list from the following:

acsize=n: The number of entries to keep in the attribute cache (1390 bytes per entry).
bcsize=n: The number of entries to keep in the block cache (8244 bytes per entry).
lcsize=n: The number of entries to keep in the lookup cache (56 bytes per entry).

The defaults are: acsize=200,bcsize=25,lcsize=100

Attributes Cache

The server's attribute cache retains file attribute information on requests that have been made. This provides faster access to entries which have previously been decoded.

Lookup Cache

The lookup cache holds information about the sequential nature of the directory entries. This cache stores the location of the next directory entry. When a request comes in for a directory entry, if the preceding directory entry had been accessed earlier, this location is examined first to see if the directory entry being requested matches the directory entry at that location.

Block Cache

This cache holds raw 8k blocks of recently accessed data.

EXAMPLES

To start a pfs daemon with a 400 entry attribute cache:

pfsd -o acsize=400 & 

To start 4 pfs daemons with the default cache sizes:

pfsd 4 & 

WARNINGS

It is not a good idea to have the cache sizes of the pfsd exceed the amount of physical memory (or actually a small portion thereof). If the pfsd spends excessive amounts of time swapping to and from disk, the benefits of the caching are diminished.

Specifying cache which consume more virtual memory than available will cause the daemon to die with a virtual memory error.

AUTHOR

pfsd was developed by Young Minds, Inc.