I believe this test case is wrong, relevant text from RFC: Some clients require the support of blocking locks. The NFSv4 protocol must not rely on a callback mechanism and therefore is unable to notify a client when a previously denied lock has been granted. Clients have no choice but to continually poll for the lock. This presents a fairness problem. Two new lock types are added, READW and WRITEW, and are used to indicate to the server that the client is requesting a blocking lock. The server should maintain an ordered list of pending blocking locks. When the conflicting lock is released, the server may wait the lease period for the first waiting client to re-request the lock. After the lease period expires, the next waiting client request is allowed the lock. Test case: # Standard owner opens and locks a file fh1, stateid1 = c.create_confirm(t.word(), deny=OPEN4_SHARE_DENY_NONE) res1 = c.lock_file(t.word(), fh1, stateid1, type=WRITE_LT) check(res1, msg="Locking file %s" % t.word()) # Second owner is denied a blocking lock file = c.homedir + [t.word()] fh2, stateid2 = c.open_confirm(b"owner2", file, access=OPEN4_SHARE_ACCESS_BOTH, deny=OPEN4_SHARE_DENY_NONE) res2 = c.lock_file(b"owner2", fh2, stateid2, type=WRITEW_LT, lockowner=b"lockowner2_LOCK20") check(res2, NFS4ERR_DENIED, msg="Conflicting lock on %s" % t.word()) sleeptime = c.getLeaseTime() // 2 # Wait for queued lock to timeout for i in range(3): env.sleep(sleeptime, "Waiting for queued blocking lock to timeout") res = c.compound([op.renew(c.clientid)]) check(res, [NFS4_OK, NFS4ERR_CB_PATH_DOWN]) # Standard owner releases lock res1 = c.unlock_file(1, fh1, res1.lockid) check(res1) # Third owner tries to butt in and steal lock second owner is waiting for # Should work, since second owner let his turn expire file = c.homedir + [t.word()] fh3, stateid3 = c.open_confirm(b"owner3", file, access=OPEN4_SHARE_ACCESS_BOTH, deny=OPEN4_SHARE_DENY_NONE) res3 = c.lock_file(b"owner3", fh3, stateid3, type=WRITEW_LT, lockowner=b"lockowner3_LOCK20") check(res3, msg="Grabbing lock after another owner let his 'turn' expire") Note that the RFC indicated the client has one lease period AFTER the conflicting lock is released to retry while the test case waits 1.5 lease period after requesting the blocking lock before it releases the conflicting lock... Am I reading things right? Thanks Frank Filz