NFS quirks

[Michael Peek]

Hello Ubuntu Gurus,

I'm a new Ubuntu fan, after having installed it on my laptop and on a
few cow-orkers' machines.  I've worked with Debian before, but there are
a few things that don't seem to work the same under Ubuntu, and I can't
figure out why.  One such thing is NFS.

I have nfs-kernel-server package installed.
I edited /etc/exports.
I can run "invoke-rc.d nfs-kernel-server start" command, and all works
well.  Remote machines can see and mount directories from the NFS server.

But after the NFS server machine is rebooted, for some reason, NFS
directories aren't exported automatically.  I can run showmount -e and
get an empty list (as opposed to an error message, which is what I think
you get when NFS isn't running).  But I have to log in and type
"exportfs -a" or "invoke-rc.d nfs-kernel-server restart" in order for
the directories to be exported again.

Another weird quirk that I've found is that if the NFS service is
started on the server while one of the NFS clients is down, that client
will be excluded from the access list.  I.e. "showmount -e" will list
the directory that's being exported, along with a list of machines that
can mount that directory, but the client that was down at the time the
NFS server was started won't be included in said list.  (Clear as mud?)

Maybe I'm just confused.  Since this does involve a server, I haven't
experimented with it too much, as it involves shutting down and
rebooting things just to test.

Anyone out there that can clue me in?

Michael