Ok I got the nfs userspace server running rock solid. What I did was share out the /home directory and set up NIS, so now the clients can log in and have all their files regardless of the system they log in to. problem is GNOME requires nfslock, so I had to switch to the kernel server.

The kernel server starts up fine, but when I mount the /home directory on the client it just dies. /var/log/messages doesn't show anything.

So I mount the directory on the client. When I unmount I get this message:

Bad UMNT RPC: RPC: Unable to receive; errno = Connection refused

and then when I try to mount it again:

mount: RPC: Unable to receive; errno = Connection refused

But if I go to the server, type in /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start, then the client can mount the directory again. Its very strange. It doesn't help much that the kernel nfs doesn't seem to put out any kind of error messages, at least as far as I can see. So I don't know where to begin on this one.

Anyone see this before?

Well, lots of reasons come to mind, but let's try these:

Is it possible that you don't run the portmapper? I think you would see other problems, but you might check.

Then shut down your firewall and see if your problem is still there.

Hope it helps,
mlp

I tried turning off the firewall with the same result.

Portmapper must be running since I can mount the nfs filesystem on the client and it works. But I have to /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart on the server everytime I want to mount and unmount anything on the client.

I tried /etc/init.d/portmap restart and it restarted fine but I still have the same problem.

Nevermind... the problem was a bad package... specifically the 1.0.3-2 debs for nfs-common and nfs-kernel-server. I replaced them with an older version and everything works great.

http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-u.../msg49880.html