nfs problem w/debian potato

[John Mastrolia <jm@veritas.com>]

Being relatively new to debian, I was surprised that my system
will panic when mounting an nfs partition.  I checked the man-page
for mount options, read a few FAQ's, and searched through the last
few months of list archives.  Nothing was mentioned about this 
problem, so it must be something I'm doing.

Basically, I'm trying to mount a nfs partition exported from a 
Solaris 2.7 box (using both v2 and v3 nfs) and get a panic error
that freezes the local workstation.  Could someone point me to the
document that points out the errors of my ways?

mount -t nfs -o tcp,defaults,bg,soft <hostname>:/var/mail /var/mail

or in /etc/fstab

<hostname>:/var/mail /var/mail nfs defaults,tcp,bg,soft 0 0

Any help appreciated.  Thanks.
---
John Mastrolia <jm@veritas.com>