Hi,

> 3) Mount file system soft or hard                      soft
>     >>> NEVER mount an NFS filesystem 'hard'... if the NFS client EVER
> looses contact with the NFS server, it will hang and it WILL take a
> reboot to recover.
>     >>> By mounting 'soft', if the NFS clinet looses contact
> with the NFS
> server, the mount can be dealt with, ie. unmounted, with a
> little work.

That's not a good advice, IMO. Only use the soft mount, if the
filesystem is mounted read-only. Otherwise this could lead to
data corruption. For read-write mounted filesystems, use the
intr option.
Here's an excerpt of the AIX Performance Management Guide:

"One of the choices you make when configuring NFS-mounted directories
is whether the mounts will be hard (-o hard) or soft (-o soft). When,
after a successful mount, an access to a soft-mounted directory
encounters an error (typically, a timeout), the error is immediately
reported to the program that requested the remote access. When an
access to a hard-mounted directory encounters an error, NFS retries
the operation.

A persistent error accessing a hard-mounted directory can escalate
into a perceived performance problem because the default number of
retries (1000) and the default timeout value (0.7 second), combined
with an algorithm that increases the timeout value for successive
retries, mean that NFS continues to try to complete the operation.

It is technically possible to reduce the number of retries, or
increase the timeout value, or both, using options of the mount
command. Unfortunately, changing these values sufficiently to
remove the perceived performance problem might lead to unnecessary
reported hard errors. Instead, use the intr option to mount the
hard-mounted directories, which allows the user to interrupt from
the keyboard a process that is in a retry loop.

Although soft-mounting the directories causes the error to be
detected sooner, it runs a serious risk of data corruption.
In general, read/write directories should be hard-mounted."

Dirk