The documentation should mention these limitations: - we do support installing the product on an NFS server. - we do support using NFS with a generated SDK. - we do NOT support building on an NFS filesystem. - BUT we do support configuring the project with parts of it on an NFS filesystem. In this case, you -must- use --enable-tmpdir=[path] (the bitbake temporary build/scratch area; the TMPDIR in the local.conf file). The tmpdir path -must- be on a local disk (or ramdisk). NFS is simply not acceptable.