Random Thoughts by Paul

If you experience chown failures where you have no_root_squash (root= in /etc/dfs/dfstab) specified for a nfs client you are probably dealing with an issue of named user/group passing in NFSv4 vs id based passing in NFSv3. Your options are to either specify version 3 or make sure that the users/groups exist on both the cilent and server or make sure they don't exist on the client. That will ensure the id is passed as numeric as there is no name to lookup and pass.

Example:
/etc/group excerpt on client (group monkeys doesn't exist on NFS server)
monkeys::101:

#chown ringo:monkeys /nfsmount/test
-bash-3.2# chown ringo:monkeys /nfsmount/test
chown: /nfsmount/test: Permission denied