NFS-mounting /var/spool/mail

[Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct@mit.edu>]

Greetings,

I have /var/spool/mail nfs mounted on my client machines, so users on
the clients can use movemail to get their mail, and so mail sent to the
client machines will go to the universal spool on the server.

Unfortunately, when the server goes down, even root cannot log in to the
clients, because (I think) it tries to check for available mail and
hangs indefinitely.

Is there any way to set an NFS timeout so it only tries for, say, five
seconds?  Or anything else I can do to allow root logins to the clients
when the server is down?  Otherwise, I have to power cycle and wait for
fsck...

TIA,

      Adam Powell                     http://lyre.mit.edu/~powell/
      Thomas B. King Assistant Professor of Materials Engineering
      77 Massachusetts Ave. Rm. 4-117         Phone (617) 452-2086
      Cambridge, MA 02139 USA                   Fax (617) 253-5418