Mounting an NFS share

Question

Level 3

825 points

Mounting an NFS share

Hi,

I'm attempting to mount an NFS share and having no success. Regardless of the settings I try, the Finder still denies me access to the NFS share, even though it mounts fine. I seem to have no read or write access to the share.

I've tried exporting the share (in /etc/exports on the server machine) in two ways: with

/home/REDACTED/share     REDACTED/28(rw,sync,all_squash)

And

/home/REDACTED/share     REDACTED/28(rw,sync,insecure,all_squash,anonuid=1001,anongid=1001)

In the second example, the anonuid and anongid are those of the shared folder's owner and group. I added "insecure" because a how-to on the web claims that OS X won't work with any shares that don't have this specified.

With either of these settings applied, Disk Utility verifies the existence of the share, and mounts it. However, I can neither read files within, or add files to, the shared folder. The error produced is:

The folder “share” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents.

I have tried the following Advanced Mount Parameters, each to no effect:

nodev resvport nolocks locallocks intr soft wsize=32768 rsize=3276
nodev nosuid resvport nolocks locallocks intr soft wsize=32768 rsize=3276 ro
nodev,nosuid,resvport,nolocks,locallocks,intr,soft,wsize=32768,rsize=3276
nodev,nosuid,resvport,nolocks,locallocks,intr,soft,wsize=32768,rsize=3276 ro
resvport,nolocks,locallocks,intr,soft,wsize=32768,rsize=3276
-i,-s,-w=32768,-r32768
-P

I'd rather not employ SAMBA, and the Apple File Sharing package for my server's OS (Ubuntu 11.10) appears to be bugged currently. Besides, NFS would be a far neater solution.

Any helpful advice?

S.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jan 30, 2012 10:11 PM

Reply

Answer 1

etresoft

Level 8

46,530 points

Feb 3, 2012 11:09 AM in response to Scotch_Brawth

Scotch_Brawth wrote:

The "Documentation" share is supposed to be a read-only repository of documentation related to all my software, hardware and household appliances (such as my A/V amp, Freeview STB etc). This share should only be readable by users on my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro, and only writable by root. If it could also be readable by an iPhone app, that'd be nice, but I don't expect it.

You should only use root for system administration tasks. Using it for anything else is bound to cause problems. Aside from that, you would share your "Documentation" with a web server. That will work everywhere.

The "intermediary" share should be read/writable by all users on my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro, allowing me to use this share to store items that I'm working on using either device (though only one device at a time)---for example, TeX documents or GIMP files. This is because I tend to avoid using the Mac Pro where my MacBook Pro will suffice, for power-saving reasons.

If you are really using only TeX and GIMP, just use ssh. Login remotely and edit in vi or X11.

If you really want Finder access, NFS would be best all around. Edit the server configuration to allow connection from ephemeral ports that MacOS X uses - the "insecure" option - although security has nothing to do with it. Setup your UID/GID mappings. Get rid of the squash settings. Use AutoFS.

While I am a bit biased against Netatalk, it should work too. If it doesn't, that is just an Ubuntu problem. Another option would be WebDAV. It is neither fast nor reliable and would the hardest to setup. Samba is still an option, although if it doesn't work at first, you'll never get it fixed.

It sure seems like your primary bottleneck is that Linux machine. Get rid of it. If you are concerned about power, why not just run it all on the Mac? You can run Privoxy and Squid on the Mac. Personally, I would recommend Polipo instead of Privoxy. I have worked with the people running Privoxy. They are neither Mac-friendly nor even friendly at all. Ditch that junk.

Finally, yet another option might be to again ditch the Linux machine and install DD-WRT on your wireless router. You get all the Linux networking power with a fraction of the hassle and energy conumption of the Dell.