From: Olga Kornievskaia <redacted>

quoted

Hi

This is a quick general NFS server question.

Does the NFSv4x  specification require or recommend that:   the NFS server, after some reasonable time,
should / must close orphan / zombie open files ?

Why should the server be responsible for a badly behaving client? It
seems like you are advocating for the world where a problem is hidden
rather than solved. But because bugs do occur and some customers want
a quick solution, some storage providers do have ways of dealing with
releasing resources (like open state) that the client will never ask
for again.

Why should we excuse bad user behaviour? For things like long running
jobs users have to be educated that their credentials must stay valid
for the duration of their usage.

Why should we excuse poor application behaviour that doesn't close
files? But in a way we do, the OS will make sure that the file is
closed when the application exists without explicitly closing the

From the perspective of the system-admin of a large NFS server
that provides services to a large multi-mission user base,
Making the file-service ( client and server file-service components )
tolerant, of foolishness and malice ( DOS / DDOS ) at the application
layer, is highly advantageous.  

This is not a problem of determining where to justly place blame.
We are all fairly certain that the "culprits" are users creating / using bad applications; however,
We are 100% certain that the strategy of eliminating all bad applications ( accidental and
intentional) is a bit like global-peace ... highly desirable; but, not so easy to implement.

file. So I'm curious how do you get in a state with zombie?

I think in most cases its:
file is open for a period of time long enough to be affected by a "disruption".

The most common "disruption" for me appears to be Kerberos ticket expiration
for interactive user sessions. ( for known long running background /robotic tasks
I have people manage (keytab based ) credentials with gssproxy .. works nicely; but
not for interactive use )