NFS high overhead on SUN OS 4.1

[Tony Tran]

I've recently upgraded a SUN 3/280 from SUN OS 3.4 to 4.1 nfs server, and
have noticed an unusally high load average on this server.

There is no application software running on this system. It has nothing
but software to be exported to other clients. All it is running is nfsd
daemon, ypbind, and cron.  (See below)

I would expect the load average to be well under 1 !!!

System configuration:

SUN 3/280; 16 MB of memory; 52 MB swap; trimmed kernel, 2 DK-815 Hitachi
drives; SUN OS 4.1; Xylogic 450/451 controller; no client; running TMPFS.

It exports its file systems to about 20 other diskful workstations.  Is
there anything seriously wrong with the setup of this server?  WHY is the
load so high?  Any hints/suggestions/RTFM welcome

Tony
tran at bungi.com

Load:

$ uptime

  1:35pm  up  5:08,  1 user,  load average: 6.83, 5.86, 5.41

$ nfsstat

Server rpc:
calls      badcalls   nullrecv   badlen     xdrcall
4227865    0          0          0          0          

Server nfs:
calls      badcalls
4227865    0          
null       getattr    setattr    root       lookup     readlink   read       
19  0%     2102021 49% 35  0%     0  0%      4648  0%   647  0%    2118651 50% 
wrcache    write      create     remove     rename     link       symlink    
0  0%      163  0%    77  0%     3  0%      0  0%      0  0%      5  0%      
mkdir      rmdir      readdir    fsstat     
1  0%      0  0%      1317  0%   278  0%    

Client rpc:
calls    badcalls retrans  badxid   timeout  wait     newcred  timers
0        0        0        0        0        0        0        0        

Client nfs:
calls      badcalls   nclget     nclsleep
0          0          0          0          
null       getattr    setattr    root       lookup     readlink   read       
0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       
wrcache    write      create     remove     rename     link       symlink    
0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       
mkdir      rmdir      readdir    fsstat     
0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       0 0%       

$ ps aux

USER       PID %CPU %MEM   SZ  RSS TT STAT START  TIME COMMAND
root       324  7.7  2.7  152  424 p0 R    13:37   0:00 ps aux
root        96  7.4  0.0   40    0 ?  S    08:28  21:24  (nfsd)
root        97  6.6  0.0   40    0 ?  S    08:28  20:37  (nfsd)
root        99  3.5  0.0   40    0 ?  S    08:28  18:10  (nfsd)
root       100  2.7  0.0   40    0 ?  S    08:28  19:03  (nfsd)
root       101  1.6  0.0   40    0 ?  S    08:28  23:07  (nfsd)
root        98  1.6  0.0   40    0 ?  S    08:28  20:57  (nfsd)
root       102  0.4  0.0   40    0 ?  S    08:28  20:48  (nfsd)
root       264  0.0  0.3   40   40 ?  S    13:17   0:05 in.rlogind
root        55  0.0  0.0   56    0 ?  IW   08:28   0:00 keyserv
tran       265  0.0  0.0   72    0 p0 IW   13:17   0:01 -csh (csh)
root        50  0.0  0.0   80    0 ?  IW   08:28   0:02 portmap
root        68  0.0  0.0   24    0 ?  I    08:28   0:00  (biod)
root        71  0.0  0.0   24    0 ?  I    08:28   0:00  (biod)
bin         53  0.0  0.0   40    0 ?  IW   08:28   0:00 ypbind
root        70  0.0  0.0   24    0 ?  I    08:28   0:00  (biod)
root       128  0.0  0.0   56    0 ?  IW   08:28   0:06 inetd
root        95  0.0  0.0   40    0 ?  S    08:28  19:58  (nfsd)
root         2  0.0  0.0    0    0 ?  D    08:27   0:00 pagedaemon
root       151  0.0  0.0  112    0 ?  IW   08:30   0:00 /usr/lib/sendmail -bd -q
root         1  0.0  0.0   56    0 ?  IW   08:27   0:00 /sbin/init -
root        69  0.0  0.0   24    0 ?  I    08:28   0:00  (biod)
root         0  0.0  0.0    0    0 ?  D    08:27   0:00 swapper
root       273  0.0  1.1   64  168 p0 S    13:18   0:01 -u (csh)
root       103  0.0  0.0   72    0 ?  IW   08:28   0:03 rpc.mountd -n
root       109  0.0  0.0   56    0 ?  IW   08:28   0:00 rpc.statd
root       119  0.0  0.1   24   16 ?  S    08:28   1:23 update
root       107  0.0  0.0   96    0 ?  IW   08:28   0:00 rpc.lockd
root       122  0.0  0.0   64    0 ?  IW   08:28   0:00 cron
root       166  0.0  0.0   56    0 ?  IW   08:41   0:02 rpc.rquotad
root       249  0.0  0.0   56    0 co IW   11:39   0:00 - std.9600 console (gett