[c-nsp] Extremely slow performing show running-config

[Jason Koh]

Hi there

I have a strange problem with a pair of cat6509s. Both are connected to each
other via OSPF and IBGP, with EBGP with my upstream providers.

Whenever I use show running-config, it will pause for an extremely long time
after the line "Building Configuration". It happens from either console or
telnet sessions. At first I thought it was a CPU or memory problem, but
"show proc cpu" and "show proc mem" shows nothing out of the ordinary (cpu
less than 20% and memory with more than 256M free). Rebooting both machines
doesn't solve the problem either.

After further investigations, I found out that the same problem occurs when
I do the following as well.

1) copy running-config startup-config
2) write memory

Show startup-config does not have this problem.

>From what I see, it looks like a problem with NVRAM. Also predictably, the
session doing any of the 3 commands will lock the NVRAM preventing other
sessions from doing a show startup-config as well. Killing the session
(clear line vty or clear line console) that are doing any of the 3 command
doesn't seem to kill the session at all.

It doesn't seem to be a hardware issue as both cat6509s display the same
problem since early this month at the same time.

Any insights on this will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

/Jason