On Wed, 1 Nov 1995, Robert Dobbs wrote:

> Are there any suggestions for 'nice' nfs settings that don't lock up
> the machine when a server crashes?  Even nqnfs locks solid on the attempt
> to kill the process.  Where to start to fix the code to not be so evil?

Saying that it locks up the whole machine is probably overstating things a
bit.  As long as you don't try to access any NFS when a server goes down,
you're fine; this means, for example, that you can login as root and
shutdown/restart (as long as the .profile/.login/.cshrc isn't using stuff 
from an NFS server!).

Using amd(8) will help to alleviate the problem, since the mounts are 
only made when you need them.  You incur a small performance penalty for 
the initial mount, but in my experience this is worth the somewhat 
increased reliability of the system.

--scott