Subject: [nfsv4] ESXi VMware NFSv4.1 client to FreeBSD server issue (directory Change attribute)

From: Rick Macklem <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2018 01:02:08 +0000

When a VMware ESXi NFSv4.1 mounts a FreeBSD NFSv4.1 server and something
called the "datastore browser" is used to delete files, the client logs messages
like these:
- can't delete a folder with the VMware host client datastore browser:
                2018-03-08T11:34:00.349Z cpu1:67981 opID=f5159ce3)WARNING: NFS41:       NFS41FileOpReaddir:4728: Failed to process READDIR result for fh  0x43046e4cb158: Transient file system condition, suggest retry
**** Repeats a bunch of times and then...
                2018-03-08T11:34:00.352Z cpu1:67981 opID=f5159ce3)WARNING: UserFile: 2155: hostd-worker: Directory changing too often to perform readdir operation (11 retries), returning busy

All I can think of is that it is upset by the fact that the Change attribute for the
directory changes each time an entry is removed.
I can't see anything in RFC5661 to indicate that the Change attribute for a
directory shouldn't be changed whenever an entry is removed.

Is there some special case for Change for directories?
Does anyone have any insight into this?

Thanks, rick
ps: There were some other issues with the ESXi mount against the FreeBSD
      server, but those have been resolved by changes to the FreeBSD server.