[Networker] random '! no output' failures for Netware volumes

All-

Server: NetWorker 6.1.3 on RH Linux 7.3, dual GHz Xeons, 1.5 Gig RAM
Clients: NetWorker 4.21 on NetWare 4.11 and 6, up to date with software
patches (according to our NetWare admins).  Various hardware configs.

We regularly see seemingly random problems with volumes on one or more of
our Netware boxes failing with '! no output':

* foo.nodak.edu:VOL2: ! no output
* bar.nodak.edu:VOL5: ! no output

This may happen immediately when the backup starts, or it sometimes
happens after a volume has partially backed up.  Running the savegrp
again right after it completes often allows that volume to succeed, but
not always.

What's perplexing to me is that it sometimes happens even for fulls.
I could understand it if during an incremental the client had to walk
the volume and didn't send any files for a while, but that shouldn't
be an issue for the fulls.  Also, the group that most of our Netware
clients are in has an "inactivity timeout: 90".  It's not just huge
volumes that fail this way -- as often as not it's on a volume with
less than 30K files using less than 4 Gig of space.  The fact that
the '! no output' sometimes happens as soon as the client starts also
seems to point at something other than an inactivity timeout.

Anyone have any ideas for things our NetWare people should check?  We
would love to nail this problem, as it's something we've seen sporadically
for a long time now.

Thanks!

Tim

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