I managed to get NFS working between one machine with Red Hat 7.3 (server) and another machine with Slackware 6.3 kernel 2.0.35 That is, it works when the server is not root. But what really puzzels me is telnet. I can ping from both machines with no trouble, but telnet only works when the server telnet's the client . Telnet fails when the Slackware machine trys to telnet the Red Hat machine. e.g. telnet 194.155.75.90 telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused Is the Slackware 6.3 kernel 2.0.35 telnet version just too old? Or is something in Red Hat keeping it from connecting? Security is not an issue here. This is just two home machines.