This feels like a client caching problem. If you read a file as root,
the NFS server may deny access. The client then stores the fact that
the file is not readable in its cache.
If a non-root process requests the same file, the client may look in
its cache, see that the file is not readable, and deny access. If you
snoop the network, I think you'll find that when the client is
producing these errors it isn't actually talking to the NFS server.
Eventually, the cache entry expires and the client starts working
again.
I know that certain versions of IRIX have this problem, and there may
well be a patch for it.
Peter
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