automounter problems on a 4D/320VGX

[luis soltero]

hi netlanders,

        we have an iris 4d/320vgx w/ 64 megs of ram and 2G of disk space
that is used as our main file server providing mail/nfs and yp
services to a network personal iris and macs.  for the last several
months the 320 has been hanging up periodically w/ a failure interval
of between 2 hours to 13 days.  the technical support people at SGI
blame the automounter for observed behavior.   the claim is that the
automounter puts file locks on directories and if two or more
automount request are made in close succession the kernel will go into
a dead lock.

so, i said "no problem, i will use amd".  i have installed amd on all
our personal iris and the 4d/320.  amd seems to run fine on the
personal iris but the 4d/320 still locks up after a random time
interval.

i have several questions for the net.
         a)  does anyone out there use amd and have you had any problems
w/ it?
         b) is it possible that the problems i am observing w/ the 320 are
related to something other to automounting file systems?
         c) is there are work around to this problem other than NFS
mounting 21 file systems?

thanks,

--luis at rice.edu