KDE hangs when nfs connection is lost

This is the situation:
I have a server which is located in the basement. The server exports a few directories which I mount on my desktop using NFS. From time to time, the connection gets lost. The server is also not always on. I can’t change that part, so I worked out a script which notifies me when it’s going down, and when it’s back up again. It also mounts everything back.

However… As soon as I loose the connection, my desktop seems to be gone. KDE doesn’t work, but I can use a few applications like Konsole, google-chrome, firefox, stuff like that. But the plasma-desktop around it hangs.

As soon as the connection gets back again, everything works. I have this issue only when my desktop is running while I loose the connection to the server. If it’s down when I start my desktop, everything works properly. Unless the server comes alive, the nfs directories are mounted and the connection is lost again.

My hardware:

linux-bbdu:~ # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G84 [GeForce 8600 GT] (rev a1)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)
04:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC16 (CX23416) MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)

My kernel:
linux-bbdu:~ # uname -r
2.6.31.12-0.2-default

My linux distribution:
linux-bbdu:~ # cat /etc/SuSE-release
openSUSE 11.2 (i586)
VERSION = 11.2

My KDE version:
linux-bbdu:~ # kde4-config --version
Qt: 4.6.3
KDE: 4.3.5 (KDE 4.3.5) “release 0”
kde4-config: 1.0

I hope I gave enough explanation of my problem, and thanks in advance for your answers.

Perhaps you should mount them somewhere else other than the Desktop directory and have symlinks from your desktop.

It depends of course on what those “few directories” are and if they are used when the connection fails.

When you start e.g. and editor when it is not mounted, the editor will simply sya that the file is not found.
But when you are editing and the connection fails all sorts of time out and retry mechanisms start their jobs.