A named pipe created on an NFS-server is not seen as such on NFS-clients. For example, I have a filesystem mounted as /green on an NFS-server (running 10.2-STABLE #0 r289145). After creating a FIFO there with mkfifo, I can see it properly: prw-r--r-- 1 mi wheel 0 Nov 29 00:05 /green/tmp/test However, an NFS-client (running 10.2-STABLE FreeBSD 10.2-STABLE #0 r291365) sees the same entry differently: ?rw-r--r-- 1 mi wheel 0 Nov 29 00:05 /green/tmp/test (note the question mark for type...) stat(1) demonstrates other differences: NFS-server: 92 74636334 prw-r--r-- 1 mi wheel 0 0 "Nov 29 00:05:51 2015" "Nov 29 00:05:51 2015" "Nov 29 00:05:51 2015" "Nov 29 00:05:51 2015" 16384 0 0 /green/tmp/test NFS-client: 973143811 74636334 ?rw-r--r-- 1 mi wheel 4294967295 0 "Nov 29 00:05:51 2015" "Nov 29 00:05:51 2015" "Nov 29 00:05:51 2015" "Dec 31 18:59:59 1969" 16384 0 0 /green/tmp/test
FWIW, I do not see the same problem on another pair of servers -- both running 10.1-STABLE.
Tested: nfs server 10.1p24, nfs client 10.2p7, sees: prw-rw-r-- 1 root wheel 0 Nov 29 10:12 bla
Created attachment 163657 [details] tcpdump-capture of NFS-client doing an ls Attaching the tcpdump-capture as requested by Rick by e-mail. Meanwhile, I tested the two computers mounting their own shares. The old: % mount 192.168.1.8:/green /mnt % ls -l /mnt/tmp/test ?rw-r--r-- 1 mi wheel 0 29 лис 00:05 /mnt/tmp/test The new: % mount 192.168.1.2:/spare /mnt % mkfifo /spare/fifo % ls -l /spare/fifo /mnt/fifo prw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 29 лис 13:12 /mnt/fifo prw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 29 лис 13:12 /spare/fifo I then mounted the other way -- with the old system being the NFS-client -- and could not see the bug either. I think, this points conclusively at a bug in NFS-server of 10.2-STABLE #0 r289145 -- which must've been fixed by the time of r291365. I'll rebuild the kernel on the old server to confirm...