I think I found a bug in 4.9.214: a simple directory traversal of a NFSv3-mounted filesystem causes system lockup after a few seconds - everything attempting NFS and local disk access is blocked. The machine is still alive (responding to pings and on the console), but I can't start any new programs.
4.9.213 is OK, 4.9.214 is not.
If we revert commit 67a56e9743171bdacddbdc05a58735aa024bb474 (commit 4b310319c6a8ce708f1033d57145e2aa027a883c upstream), the problem goes away.
How to trigger the problem:
mount nfs-server.example.com:/ /mnt/net -o vers=3,ro
find /mnt/net
I have observed this only on two older machines running in i386 mode (my home server, an Intel D2500HN, and a test machine, a Lenovo ThinkCentre A57 (Product ID: 9851-7AG)), but could not trigger the bug on a Pentium III machine (all three running the very same kernel).