Hard-mounted and soft-mounted file problems

When the network or server has problems, programs that access hard-mounted remote files fail differently from those that access soft-mounted remote files.

If a server fails to respond to a hard-mount request, NFS prints the message:

NFS  server  hostname  not  responding,  still  trying

Hard-mounted remote file systems cause programs to hang until the server responds because the client retries the mount request until it succeeds. Use the -bg flag with the mount command when performing a hard mount so if the server does not respond, the client will retry the mount in the background.

If a server fails to respond to a soft-mount request, NFS prints the message:

Connection  timed  out  

Soft-mounted remote file systems return an error after trying unsuccessfully for a while. Unfortunately, many programs do not check return conditions on file system operations, so you do not see this error message when accessing soft-mounted files. However, this NFS error message prints on the console.