The rpc.statd service is used by NFS client to help it recover from loss of connectivity to the NFS server. When rpc.statd is not running, NFS is not able to handle remote file locking. You would also be unable to mount an NFS without specifying the “nolock” option. The common error you would get will look something like this:

[root@client /]# mount server:/share /share
mount.nfs: rpc.statd is not running but is required for remote locking.
mount.nfs: Either use '-o nolock' to keep locks local, or start statd.
mount.nfs: an incorrect mount option was specified

The problem may be that rpc.statd service is not enabled on start-up or that it started but died thereafter. Here are a few common steps to troubleshoot the problem:

1. Make certain you have nfs-util package installed

rpm -qa | grep nfs-utils

The output should look something like this:

nfs-utils-1.2.3-7.el6.x86_64
nfs-utils-lib-1.1.5-3.el6.x86_64

2. See if statd daemon is running:

ps -ef | grep -i [s]tatd

On a healthy NFS client, the output would look similar to this:

rpcuser   1724     1  0 Oct05 ?        00:00:00 rpc.statd

If you don’t see statd running, you would need to restart three service: rpcbind, nfs and nfslock. Here’s how you would do this on a Red Hat system:

for i in rpcbind nfs nfslock
do
     /etc/init.d/$i restart
done

Try mounting the filesystem again. If things work fine, make sure nfslock is enabled on start-up:

/sbin/chkconfig nfslock on

If you were able to mount NFS from this client before and now it’s not working, you may try rebooting the client.