Hi
I'm hvaing problem with a NFS- fileserver running Debian Sarge. Every 3-4 days i cant mount my shares. I just get Permision Denied.
And the log on the fileserver shows this:
Jun 27 10:39:23 main rpc.mountd: authenticated mount request from debs.utysket.dk:720 for /Apps (/Apps)
Jun 27 10:39:23 main rpc.mountd: getfh failed: Operation not permitted

I been googling and all i found that worked is "exportfs -av". Something with "/var/lib/nfs/xtab" is getting renewed. The problem is that i've got to this every 3-4 days- So can any one tell my what the cause really is.

Because it's re-occuring periodicly I suspect there's a link with the expiring of certain permissions. Not sure which, but you'd have to check all authentication processes on your system. (like ssh, pam, etc)

Sorry for late reply. I tried to look around mostly in the logs. What did you had in mind?

None in particular, actually. But given your original post I'd suggest to take a closer look at rpc.mountd and /var/lib/nfs/xtab and the processes associated. Apparently the getfh function fails because it doesn't have enough permissions. Or it's parent process doesn't have the required permissions.

I have the same problem sometimes when my nfs client is receiving its ip address per DHCP. When I set a static ip address the problem goes away.

Update:
I fixed the problem by rewrite my hosts.allow and exports. To be honest i can't remember what the looked like a month ago. But i checked that the entire submask with every ip-address was written. Clients and fileserver is in different subnets.
It's still strange that it worked for 3-4 days and then i had to reexport my exports. But i guess that's the wonders of computers.. ;-)

portmap: 172.16.0.0/255.255.255.224 172.16.0.32/255.255.255.248 127.0.0.1
........

/Apps 172.16.0.0/255.255.255.224(rw,sync,no_root_squash) 127.0.0.1(rw,sync,no_root_squash) 172.16.0.32/255.255.255.248(rw,sync,no_root_squash)