NFS consumes network bandwidth consistently

[Mike Eubanks]

I'm really not sure where to start on this one.  No changes have been
made on the server for some time.  Both are running 5.4-STABLE.

On the client (my workstation) I cleaned out my home directory to
freshen up my Gnome desktop.  Shortly thereafter, the network load began
to exhibit a consistent patern of stepping from 0% usage to roughly 80%
usage, something it hasn't done in the past.  Every time I use an
application such as Mozilla, Evolution, etc. (in Gnome 2.10) the network
usage drops immediately to 0% for a short period, say 10-30 seconds, and
begins to accumulate gradually again.  On the other hand, network load
does not fall off when running any process as a daemon, or from the
shell.

I used `tcpdump' to dump the packets being sent on the interface.  It
appears NFS is generating all of the traffic, although, I'm not sure why
because the actual mounts are not heavily used, or at least haven't
demonstrated this behaviour in the past.  I unmounted all NFS file
systems and the network load dropped off completely and did not return.

I did move the mount points directly to my home directory, rather than
linking to a mount point that existed in /mnt.  This is about the only
other thing I can think of, altough, I'm hoping someone could tell me a
bit more before I reverse the changes.

-- 
Mike Eubanks <mse_software at charter.net>