NFS, Finder and Interrupted Server Connection problem

Does anyone have a clue how you get NFS to work reliable with Finder ?

I'm running an NFS server on both a Ubuntu Server and a QNAP 409 Pro NAS, both have the same problem when accessed from a Macbook. In terminal everything works perfectly and autofs mounts the directory and I'm able to read and write to it.

When I try to access the same directory with Finder it sometimes work and sometimes not. When it doesn't work Finder doesn't show directory contents and a dialog saying "Server connections interrupted" appears after a while. At the same time I can open up a terminal and read and write to the directory.

I've had this problem both with Leopard and now also with Snow Leopard.
The nfs mounts has been setup with -P flag in the Disk Utility in Snow Leopard and they are mounted as directories directly under /Network/

From a Ubuntu Laptop the NFS mounts works perfectly, so I'm pretty sure it isn't caused by any disturbances on the server side.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Sep 13, 2009 4:10 AM

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4 replies

Oct 1, 2009 6:42 AM in response to erlandi

I'm having similar problems, or rather, the user I support is having similar problems.

The NFS server is a Redhat linux box (RHEL5).

I upgraded a Mac Mini to Snow Leopard, and set up an NFS share, using the same flags that I had used under Leopard: -i net -s -P -b

The user reported major problems when trying to access the NFS-shared files from the Finder, but no problem in Terminal.

What's more, when he tried to work from another machine, an iMac still running Leopard, that had the same NFS export mounted, it also froze up. So this is now a major problem, since we have several machines pointing at the same NFS share.

Here's what I see in the NFS client, the Snow Leopard Mac Mini:
Sep 30 20:59:38 hostname sandboxd[3989]: portmap(6490) deny file-read-data /private/etc/rpc
Sep 30 20:59:38 hostname sandboxd[3989]: portmap(6490) deny mach-per-user-lookup

On the NFS server (Linux):
Sep 30 20:07:54 hostname kernel: lockd: server 128.112.41.91 not responding, timed out
Sep 30 20:25:14 hostname last message repeated 3 times
Sep 30 20:27:46 hostname mountd[7629]: authenticated mount request from 128.112.201.186:1023 for /usr2 (/usr2)
Sep 30 20:28:14 hostname kernel: lockd: server 128.112.41.91 not responding, timed out

Google doesn't turn up much, but I did find one message saying to use "nolocks,locallocks" - I'm not sure where these get entered, and I'm not really sure what they entail for file integrity, especially since the NFS share is accessed from multiple clients.

Catemaco

Oct 12, 2009 7:24 AM in response to Catemaco

Update :

I was able to get NFS working. Here's what happened in my case.

I am using tcp wrappers (hosts.allow, hosts.deny files) to restrict access to most services. When I do this on a Mac OS X Leopard machine, or a (Redhat) linux machine, I set tcp wrappers on the NFS server to accept traffic from the NFS client, but I don't have to specify anything in the hosts.allow file (or firewall) on the client.

Apparently on Snow Leopard, it works differently. I found it necessary to put a line in the hosts.allow file on the client to allow traffic from the NFS server. I did this, using the server host name. The host name has worked for me on other machines, for example, to allow the NFS client to mount a drive from the NFS server, I put the client host name in the hosts.allow file on the server.

For some reason, with Snow Leopard, the host name would not work. I had to put the host IP number in the hosts.allow file. Since I'm not really sure which service or port to allow, I used "ALL:IP number of host".

This got it working for me. I'm not sure why it should be different from Leopard, and I would rather not allow ALL traffic from the server, but at least it's working.

Does anyone know where Apple documents these things? I find their documentation even sparser that Microsoft's. They tell you the steps to do something, but they don't really explain what's going on. It's hard to find anything on tcp wrappers, for example, on the Mac.

Catemaco

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NFS, Finder and Interrupted Server Connection problem

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