I found some strange behaviour according to the nfs filesystem in the
kernel.
Whenever the nfs server isn't reachable the process on the client
machine just hangs around, partially in 'D' status which means
non-interruptable.
It's funny! The kernel notices that the nfs-server is unreachable,
printk's his messages ("tapiola kernel: NFS max timeout reached on
finlandia") but then? It tries again, several times. Somewhen it
stops, dunno why.
BUT: The program just hangs around. You cannot kill it with Ctrl-C. So
nfs is not usable for machines, where users can access other
computer's files via modem line (uucp or bbs).
I don't understand the code in fs/nfs/sock.c good enough to patch it
myself, so I can only report it to you.
I would recommend to return some common error code to let user
programs correctly abort.
regards,
Joey