Frequent "backgrounding" of nfs mounts

[Roger Moye <moye bioc rice edu>]

We have a cluster running RHEL 3 AS U3 on the master node, and RHEL 3 WS 
U2 on the slave nodes.  Kernel version is 2.4.21-15.ELsmp.

We are having a problem with some of the nodes putting NFS mounts into the 
background.  For example, in /var/log/messages we see:

Apr  7 19:35:03 n09 mount: mount: backgrounding "master:/home"

On the master node, we see:

Apr  7 19:35:52 master rpc.mountd: authenticated mount request from 
n09.bw02.rice.edu:672 for /home (/home)

However, on node n09 /home is never mounted.  I have to follow up later 
with a "mount -a" and then it works fine.

This behavior has been random.  It might not happen on the next reboot or 
might happen to a different node.

Anyone have any ideas why it is backgrounding these mount attempts, and 
why it never mounts unless I issue "mount -a"?

Thanks a lot!
-Roger


-- 

=======================================
Roger Moye
Linux Systems Administrator
Rice University
Academic and Research Computing
Schools of Natural Sciences and Engineering
(713) 348-5756
moye rice edu