Here is a patch that was posted a while back on lkml that does indeed stop a OOPS.... I notice that is not in the latest rawhide kernel... We might want to think about taking this one early due to the obvious... steved. From: "Denis V. Lunev" <den(a)openvz.org&gt; Unfortunately, BUG_ON(IS_ROOT(dentry)) can happen inside nfs_follow_mountpoint with NFS running Fedora 8 using a specific setup. See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=458622 So the situation should be handled on NFS client gracefully. Signed-off-by: Denis V. Lunev <den(a)openvz.org&gt; Cc: Trond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust(a)netapp.com&gt; Cc: J. Bruce Fields <bfields(a)fieldses.org&gt; Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm(a)linux-foundation.org&gt; --- fs/nfs/namespace.c | 5 ++++- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff -puN fs/nfs/namespace.c~nfs-bug_on-in-nfs_follow_mountpoint fs/nfs/namespace.c --- a/fs/nfs/namespace.c~nfs-bug_on-in-nfs_follow_mountpoint +++ a/fs/nfs/namespace.c @@ -105,7 +105,10 @@ static void * nfs_follow_mountpoint(stru dprintk("--> nfs_follow_mountpoint()\n"); - BUG_ON(IS_ROOT(dentry)); + err = -EIO; + if (IS_ROOT(dentry)) + goto out_err; + dprintk("%s: enter\n", __func__); dput(nd->path.dentry); nd->path.dentry = dget(dentry); _