Why do clients still show up as mounted after they have supposedly unmounted from the share?
A. The client command showmount -a server_name returns which clients have which shares mounted, which is stored in the rmtab file in the product directory. If a client does not unmount or unmounts when it cannot access the server across the network, a stale entry can be left in the rmtab file. Also, some NFS clients will not send a correct unmount request if the combined length of the original mount path and server name are greater than 32 characters. In this case, it is suggested that shorter share paths be used if possible. If necessary, the rmtab file may be edited to remove stale entries, but this should be done only while the nfsmount driver is shut-down. The recording of client mounts is strictly for informational use and does not affect whether a client actually has access to a share. NFS is a stateless protocol and does not depend on the knowledge of client mounts.
