Cannot mount NFS shares using the Finder

I'm not finding anything further regarding mounting NFS shares via the Finder, but here's another way using Directory Utility that might be of interest:

http://nedos.net/2007/11/10/nfs-in-mac-os-105-leopard/

Try this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA22243

NFS mounts don't generally appear under 'Shared' in finder, just SMB and AFP. Those protocols announce their availability, NFS makes no announcement, it only responds to a direct query.

If you mount NFS via Finder, use commnad-K to bring up the Go To Server dialog and specify a URL in the form:

nfs://servername.com/path/to/share

... if the name of the server is not resolvable in DNS, specify the IP address (NFS knows nothing of zeroconf / bonjour). It's important that you specify the path as it is shared from the server (in /etc/exports on your Linux box). While it's technically possible to query an NFS server to ask what's exported, NFS servers don't have to offer a response so, Finder doesn't ask.

NOTE: By default, Mac OS X only supports up to to version 3 of the NFS protocol. If your Linux box is exporting the directories by NFSv4, you need to configure it to export them via NFSv3. Also, make sure that none of your shared directories contain the ':' character in their name.

The problem is most likely that your NFS server requires that connections come from reserved ports but you can't connect that way from the Finder GUI.

Your example:

sudo mount -o resvport nfshost:/full/path/NFS/share /My/mount/point

shows that you need to use "-o resvport" and that you need to do the mount as root. (This is because the networking stack requires you to be root to get a reserved port.) When you try to mount it via the Finder, you can't specify any mount options like "-o resvport" and even if you could the mount would fail because the Finder isn't running as root.

My first suggestion would be to change the configuration of your server to not require clients to use reserved ports for the NFS protocol. Unfortunately, Linux chooses to call that option "insecure" even though requiring the use of reserved ports (using "secure") doesn't actually make NFS more secure.

Alternatively, you could configure the mount to be performed by something that does do the mount as root - e.g. automount/autofs. You can do this by configuring the mount on Directory Utility's "Mounts" section... you'll want to add "resvport" to the "Advanced mount options" field.

HTH
--macko