Gnome logins causing DoS via .gnome/gnome-vfs/.trash_entry_cache

[Barry Shaw <baz scms waikato ac nz>]

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Hi

We've found that the combination of gnome (gnome-2.4) logins and NFS
home directories supplied via the linux automounter is causing
significant loading issues on the rpc.mountd daemon on the NFS server.

The cause of the problem is related to the directory entries in each
users ~/.gnome/gnome-vfs/.trash_entry_cache file.  When a user logs out
this file is updated with all the currently mounted file systems
(basically any home other users home dir as they are all mounted
individually off the file server).  The next time the user logs in,
nautilis(?) attempts to remount all of these filesystems.

As our NFS server is serving a number of computer labs, when a lot of
people log  in at the same time, and their
~/.gnome/gnome-vfs/.trash_entry_cache file contains a lot of
directories, the mountd daemon is experiencing a load hundreds of time
in excess of what it would normally.

I've searched the lists and the gnome-vfs docs and can't see anyway to
disable this directory mounting from occuring.  Obviously we can sort
the problem by either deleting these files or making them static (or
unwritable by users) but I assume there is a more elegant solution.  If
there are some docs or posts relating to this I'd appreciate a point in
the right direction.

Thanks
Baz


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