Linuxconf always wants to restart NFS. This is a bug in /etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs as this sysv script is of type "probe".
as of knfsd-1.2-3, when nfs is stopped, /etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs probe will correctly return 'start' not 'restart'. Do you mean you never get the 'reload' to be returned?
Does "/etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs probe" print nothing (not "nothing", rather literally nothing at all) and return success when nothing needs to be done because the configuration is up to date?
Yes, even when nothing needs to be done, the probe command always prints "restart"
Fixed in knfsd-1.2-5