simple NFS question

[hastx]

When making a chage to the /etc/exports file, I have read in some turorials that you shout force the export file system to re-read the file file running exportfs -ra .

I've always just restarted the NFS service. Is there any reason to avoid restarting the service? Am I doing something wrong by doing this instead of running the other command?

[Captain_K]

As I understand it, restarting the service dosnt force a reread of the /etc/exports file and you should always execute exportfs -ra after changeing the /etc/exports. I may be wrong...

There is alot of info on NFS on the web, google is your friend.
This is a start, but I bet you read it already.
http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/