Thanks to Manuel, I've now put the "-alldirs" NFS problem behind me.
(And I see that Julien also posted a message to point me in the right
direction.)

Now I have another question:

Granted that, at the moment, all of my machines are NetBSD machines,
is there any advantage to fooling with SAMBA vs. using NFS for files
and lpr/lpd for printing?  (Advantages other than just playing with
a different toy, and the prospect of easier communications with
certain monopoly-ware...(^&)

(I know that in _The Design & Implementation of 4.4BSD_, the authors
briefly discuss the trade-off between high-level and low-level handling
of networked filesystems, and that NFS is a happy medium.  This suggests
that if one doesn't require anything more than moving the raw bits, one
might get better performance with a higher level system.  Then again,
perhaps the network latency tradeoffs have shifted and a lower-level
handling would not lose as much performance?)

I assume that there's no direct advantage, especially for fileserving
where (under 1.6) SAMBA is only in userland, while NFS is in-kernel.
But I thought that I'd ask wiser heads for input.

Given the reports that I've seen of LINUX having trouble talking to
BSD's (or anything but LINUX?) might it be better to use SAMBA to
export filesystems to/from LINUX?  (LINUX is a more likely near-future
player in my little empire...(^&)


I guess that's more than one question if you count the punctuation.
(^&  The "overall question" is (especially re. NFS) how does SAMBA
stack up?  Especially (and on-topic) as available on NetBSD, in
either 1.6 (userland SAMBA) or later (in-kernel SAMBA in -current,
I gather, so maybe in 1.7/2.0/whatever).


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  --rkr@olib.org