[CentOS] Weird NFS problem

I have a weird NFS problem here.

I am trying to set up a machine with Centos 5 on it.  First time I've tried
Centos, but it looks like it's going to be the real thing for some machines
that I look after that are intended to be long-term "just works" application
servers.  I plan to start reading and participating in this mailing list now,
so Hello to everyone!  My name is Frank Cox and I own and operate the Melville
Theatre in Melville Saskatchewan, Canada.

My first attempt to install Centos 5 was from ISO files that I put
on my fileserver, which is the method that I use to install Fedora.  Boot off a
boot CD, point it to the appropriate directrory on the fileserver, and let 'er
rip.

That didn't work this time.  I got to the point where I told the boot CD where
to find the ISO files on the fileserver, and the whole thing hung up.  I found
an error message on one of the consoles that said something to the effect of
"server fileserver not responding, still trying".  And that's as far as I got.
I tried this a half-dozen times with the same result.

I thought maybe it just didn't like my fileserver for some reason, so I put the
ISO files on another of my computers and set up an NFS share on that computer.

Same thing again.

I gave up and put Centos 5 onto CD's, booted from CD number 1 and just swapped
CD's until I'm done.  I thought that solved everything but now I have something
even weirder.

I mounted my fileserver like this:

mount fileserver:/nas/NASDisk-00002/files /mnt/fileserver

That's exactly the same way that I mount it on my Fedora machines.

The fileserver mounts without error, and it appears at first glance to work.  I
can "cd /mnt/fileserver/where-ever" and use ls to view the files that are in
the directories.

However, if I try to read the files on the fileserver, my terminal hangs up.
All I can do is view the directories on my fileserver.  Doing anything
that reads any file on the fileserver locks up my terminal.

Logging in again from another terminal and viewing /var/log/messages tells me
this:

nfs: server fileserver not responding, still trying


This appears to be the same problem that I had when I was installing the
operating system.  Normally if the installer can't find the NFS share due to a
typo or whatever, it just tells me "Can't find the images" and that's all there
is to it.  But the installer hung up at the point where it was supposed to
start reading the images so I think it could find them but couldn't read them
either.

This exact same procedure works fine from my Fedora machines.

What in the world is going on here?  If I can't get NFS to work on this
machine I'm going to be up the creek because I use LTSP on it to run several
terminals.

I haven't tried web browsing from that machine yet, but the ethernet card is
obviously working because I did a "yum update" and a few "yum installs" with no
problem.  It is an Intel motherboard and CPU with integrated everything.

I strongly suspect that I'm doing something stupid here and can't see the
obvious.  Can someone give me a steer?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.


-- 
MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com