NFS Server – Umount results in Device Busy.

Linux Kernel: 2.6.35.14

We are using NFS for data transfer from one target to another target.
On Server we are using 3 mount points – to be used by application. And they are mentioned in /etc/exports

When initially just NFS Server is started -We can mount and safely un-mount the NFS mount point.
Now, when NFS client is started and we mount at the client. Without doing any IO – if we do un-mount at the NFS Client –it un-mounts safely. But – when tried to un-mount the device at the NFS server – it results in error “Device Busy”
“umount: can't umount /mnt: Device or resource busy”

Now , in order to umount the device - we have to kill the process ‘nfsd’ – and then it un-mounts easily.

As per our understanding – it should not be an issue with the un-mount when it is not being used and also there should be no dependency to kill ‘nfsd’ to un-mount the device.

It leads to problem of killing ‘nfsd’ and restarting it – to make other mount points work without issue.

Is there any method to un-mount the device without getting this ‘BUSY’ error? Or can we kill only nfsd service which was using that mount point? Please share your input on the solution to the above problem. Is this expected behavior?

Thanks & Regards,
Amit Sahrawatÿôèº{.nÇ+‰·Ÿ®‰­†+%ŠËÿ±éݶ¥Šwÿº{.nÇ+‰·¥Š{±þG«�éÿŠ{ayºʇڙë,j­¢f£¢·hš�ï�êÿ‘êçz_è®(­éšŽŠÝ¢j"�ú¶m§ÿÿ¾«þG«�éÿ¢¸?™¨è­Ú&£ø§~�á¶iO•æ¬z·švØ^¶m§ÿÿÃÿ¶ìÿ¢¸?–I¥

If all the clients unmount, and then you run "exportfs -f" on the server, you'll probably find you can then unmount the export.

But stopping nfsd is the most reliable way to ensure you can unmount the exported filesystems. I'd recommend doing that using your distro's nfs scripts (so "service nfs stop" or "systemctl nfs-server.service stop" or equivalent) rather than killing nfsd yourself.

--b.