[plug] Strange NFS problem

[Cameron Patrick]

Simon Scott wrote:

> Having a weird issue today - our server exports /home via NFS to my
> linux desktop, no problem.
> 
> However, I have a DVD image on the server which is mounted via loopback.
> 
> If I look while logged on to the server I can see the contents no
> problem. However, via NFS the contents directory is empty!

Linux's kernel-based NFS server doesn't work across mount points.  So
if you have /home mounted and exported via NFS, and /home/blah with
another filesystem mounted on it, the NFS clients won't see /home/blah
unless they specifically mount that.

The user-space NFS server works in this case but has its own set of
bugs.  I gave up on it when I started seeing errors on the NFS clients
like (paraphrased):

    $ rmdir /tmp/something
    /tmp/something: not a directory
    $ rm /tmp/something
    /tmp/something: is a directory

It also doesn't support locking, and I seem to remember that there was
another bug that was causing us grief when we were setting up the new
PLUG machines with NFS-mounted /home.

If anyone knows of a Linux NFS server implementation that does not
suck, I'm sure there are others around who'd like to know about it
too!

Cameron.