The NFS server is experiencing issues during the mount process, despite successful communication between the server and client as indicated by network traffic analysis. The exports file appears correctly configured, allowing access to specified IP addresses. However, there are concerns about the functionality of the portmapper and the absence of the nfsd service, which is crucial for handling requests from mountd. The hosts.deny and hosts.allow files are set up to restrict access, but their impact may be limited unless tcpwrappers are in use. Recommendations include checking that portmapper is running, trying to mount without the 'hard' and 'intr' options, and monitoring system logs for additional error messages. The user suspects potential issues with the nfs-utils package and plans to test an older version.