Chris, Thanks for the explanation. Something strange has happened since I setup my PC and laptop as you described: I can't mount nfs partitions. I discovered this when trying to mount the DVD on my laptop to install diald on my PC. It had been working the day before (that's how I installed SuSE on the PC). I don't think I have touched anything else since setting up routing. When I try and mount the nfs partition from the laptop on the pc with mount -t nfs 192.168.0.3:/cdrom /mnt/dvd I get the error 'mount: RPC: Timed out'. Both nfs and portmap services are started on both computers during boot. (By the way I have first mounted the dvd on the cdrom drive on the laptop before trying the nfs mount). Here is some information about my setup: IP Addresses: PC 192.168.0.1 Laptop 192.168.0.3 /etc/exports file from laptop contains only the following line: /cdrom 192.168.0.1(ro) the hosts.allow file on the laptop contains: # See tcpd(8) and hosts_access(5) for a description. #(ALL EXCEPT in.fingerd) EXCEPT in.identd : ALL : (safe_finger -l @%h 2>&1| \ # /bin/mail -s "%d-%h %u" root) & the hosts.deny file on the laptop contains: # See tcpd(8) and hosts_access(5) for a description. http-rman : ALL EXCEPT LOCAL I commented out this line and rebooted the system but to no effect. When I tried to mount the nfs partition RPC still timed out. Do you have any idea what is wrong or where I should be looking in my system? In the SuSE manual on p.162 it says "These scripts are started by /sbin/init.d/rpc and /sbin/init.d/nfsserver at startup." however I don't have the first script on either of my 2 computers. Is this a mistake? Regards, Jethro