NFS stall in OpenSuse 11.3

By basd on Sep 17, 2010 | In -arghhh!!

If running the NFS client when not on the relevant network, the "timeout" for NFS to give up is inordinately long in OpenSuse 11.3 . This occurs during the boot process and it is long enough to think that the computer has hung up and will not boot. But, with more waiting, the boot will complete.

...

It is not acceptable. Let's say we have a netbook that we take many locations. At certain locations, we want to automatically latch on to NFS shares. So, we have the shares in fstab. We need the NFS client to skip over unavailable shares and connect to available ones.

Even worse, there is no manual intervention by which we can say, "skip." So, if we need to DO SOME WORK but the netbook won't boot, we are screwed, unless we previously booted and suspended/hibernated the computer.

I have read one suggestion that there is an incompatibility between NFS in 11.2 and 11.3 -- and that deleting and re-creating the shares via YAST may solve the problem. Haven't had time to check.

Just one more nightmare to take care of during my night job of personal IT manager to me.