I've been having some problems with NFS client using a 1.6N kernel
compiled from last weeks sources (mid-week?). Arch is i386 if it
matters.

My NFS server allows mounting its / and /usr directories, and the client
mounts / at /mnt/nfs and /usr at /mnt/nfs/usr. This used to work very
well, but with the new kernel the /mnt/nfs/usr directory appears empty.
However, df(1), for example, shows that /mnt/nfs/usr is mounted.
Attempting to umount the directory, I get "Invalid argument" error.
The /mnt/nfs works without problems.

Attempting to mount the served /usr directory at some other point than
under the NFS mounted directory works. For example mounting / at
/mnt/nfs and /usr at /mnt/nfs2 works: both directories are OK.

The NFS server (1.6, i386) should be OK; earlier 1.6? kernels worked
fine, and on another system (alpha) 1.6K kernel works correctly.

I recall there were some commits to NFS code last week. Could this have
been fixed, or broken last week?


Another NFS (and other things) question: is there anything I can do if
I happily bring the NFS server down while the client has mounted
directories? It is most annoying when many things start to hang waiting
for the unresponding NFS server... forcibly unmounting the directories
doesn't seem to have any effect. (And the processes waiting for the
NFS can't even be killed; nice if it happens to be XMMS, in which case
another XMMS process can't be started...)