nfs is stupid ("getfh failed")

[Michael Rothwell]

Two systems that worked fine for weeks, both running 2.4.[7,8] kernels. The
server is running 2.4.8 and exporting a reiserfs filesystem via nfs. Or it
was, anyway. The server was shut down and brought back up (power failure).
The client was then
rebooted.

server# cat /etc/exports
/export 192.168.1.*(rw,no_root_squash)
/export/home 192.168.1.*(rw,no_root_squash)

client# mount /export
mount: 192.168.1.1:/export failed, reason given by server: Permission denied

server# tail /var/log/messages
Sep  6 09:37:43 gateway rpc.mountd: authenticated mount request from
192.168.1.133:933 for /export (/export)
Sep  6 09:37:43 gateway rpc.mountd: getfh failed: Operation not permitted

... so,  rebooting two working systems seems to kill NFS. Any ideas why?

On a related topic, will Linux ever have a better file-service protocol?