OK, one final bit of info. I tried showmount -a on the server and it too failed witha connection refused error.
ps aux didn't show mountd running! So, /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart, and now mountd is running. Immediately thereafter I could mount the shared partition. Based on this, it seems that the problem is that mountd is exiting unexpectedly...and I have no idea why this would occur, I cannot find any error messages in the logs to explain this. Any thoughts> nl -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]