Nobody seems to be coming right out and saying it, so...
Newcomers to NFS may not be aware that you really need to set up some kind of time synchronization between NFS clients and servers. It's Just The Right Thing To Do. Without time synchronization, users get confused, make doesn't work when you need it to, and log analysis becomes needlessly difficult.
The NTP daemon that's built into ONTAP 5.x works perfectly well in spite of the fact that it is apparently implemented in Java. And, on the NFS-client side, xntpd's are cheap and plentiful.
If NTP isn't an option, do something...some cron/rsh/rdate hackery, maybe. And then start making NTP an option. Here's a start:
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp/hardware.html http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/servers.htm
Brian brice@gnac.com