Automounter dies

[Marco S. Hyman]

In looking thru sun-spots volumes 6, 7, and 8 I've seen some mention of a
problem we are having but never an answer.  Maybe the net can help.

Running SunOS 4.0.3 on a pair of 3/280 servers with both 3/60 and 386i
clients.  We are using the automounter to cross mount the home directories
on the servers.  server1 automounts /home/server2 upon /homex and has a
symbolic link such that /home/server2 -> /homex/server2.

The problem is that the automounter dies (no messages I can find, nothing
logged) but mount still thinks is up and running.  Server1 mount output
says

server1:(pid139) on /homex type nfs (ro,intr,port=734,map=auto.home,indirect)

Any access to an automounted filesystem causes the accessing process to
hang.  The only way out I've found is to reboot the server.

Any hints?  Any place in TFM I've missed?  All pointers welcome.