One more piece of info:If on the client - I create a new symbolic link - it is fine on both client and server.
On Client: # ln -s testing.db.tar.gz JUNK # ls -l JUNK 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Jun 28 20:24 JUNK -> testing.db.tar.gz Same back on the NFS server ... # ls -l JUNK testing.db lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Jun 28 20:24 JUNK -> testing.db.tar.gz lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Jun 28 14:12 testing.db -> testing.db.tar.gz Very weird ...