NFS issue with OSX (not lion) and NV+

[Pixeltje]

Hi,

I'm having some difficulties setting up nfs acces to my NV+. I can start NFS and set a number of threads (what is this? value set to one..) but it doesn't show in Finder.
AFP and CIFS share works just fine and are visible in Finder. now when I use "connect to server" and type "nfs://IP-adressNAS:/Media" it does appear in Finder but the share "media" is empty, while the AFP (of CIFS) media share shows lots and lots of music 🙂

Can someone tell me what i'm doing wrong here?

Readynas NV+ (RND 4000 with 4*2TB Xraid 5)
Mac OS-x Snow leopard (up to date)
Gigabit network

Thanks in advance 🙂

[sphardy1]

NFS does not work the same as AFP or CIFs, is never advertised in finder nor mounted as you describe

I suggest a Little background research to get a better understanding - there are many NFS resources around

[Pixeltje]

I'll go and read a wiki ont his then 😉 still wondering why the 'media' share is empty while connection through NFS though..

[sphardy1]

Look for an Apple document that explains "autofs" - an extremely useful guide to automounting NFS shares. The link will be on this forum somewhere

[sphardy1]

Found it: http://images.apple.com/business/docs/Autofs.pdf

[Pixeltje]

Thanks, reading atm!

edit:

To be honest with you i still don't fully understand this; it seems to me that the article you referred to describes how to automount *FS shares, but i can't find out how to enable it on the nas in the right way;

When i enable NFS on the NV+ and set the permissions right (add hosts which are able to read/write) it should also display files already on the NAS right? But when i mount (or automount) using NFS, it doesn't show any files..

[sphardy1]

Pixeltje wrote:
i can't find out how to enable it on the nas in the right way;

There's nothing you have to do more - just ensure NFS is enabled

Pixeltje wrote:
when i mount (or automount) using NFS, it doesn't show any files..

Either you're not mounting the share appropriately, or there is a permissions issue. Note that in Frontview and NFS settings for the share you only define which hosts can access a share, not what the file/folder permissions are. Don't confuse access rights with permissions. How are you mounting the share?

[Pixeltje]

sphardy wrote:
There's nothing you have to do more - just ensure NFS is enabled (....) Either you're not mounting the share appropriately, or there is a permissions issue. Note that in Frontview and NFS settings for the share you only define which hosts can access a share, not what the file/folder permissions are. Don't confuse access rights with permissions. How are you mounting the share?

I've tried nfs://<IP NAS> and that worked, but did not show any files. Also tried Automount a little while ago, but didn't saw any files or folders listed then either. I'm at work right now so can't try the automount as described in the link you just gave me. However I don't think its different from what i've tried earlier. Perhaps there is indeed something wrong with setting the acces rights, but I can't check that within the next three hours.

Nevertheless; this is what i've set for the NFS acces rights:

standard: disabled
Hosts with write-acces: <IP mbp>, <IP mbp roommate>
hosts with root-acces: <IP mbp>

[sphardy1]

That's interesting - I've had chance to take a look and I take back some of my previous comments. My apologies for the incorrect information

In the past I've never had success mounting NFS shares via finder but that did not surprise me due to the different way in which NFS works vs AFP & CIFS and that manual and automounting has always worked as expected and what I actually wanted. I therefore have always presumed mounting NFS shares via Finder is just not a supported option.

While NFS servers are still not automatically detected by Finder as CIFS and AFP servers are, it does now seem possible to mount nfs shares via cmd+k - wonder if that is a recent enhancement/fix in OSX? (I'm running 10.6.8) Or maybe I just screwed up when originally looking at this a looong time ago

So in finder: CMD+K -> nfs://server/share, results in "server" being listed under Shared items and the nfs share appearing as a mounted volume for that server. The share, by default, gets mounted at /Volumes/share, /Volumes being the default finder mount point for all protocols

So back to your issue, the above discovery suggests you are hitting a permissions issues so what permissions are set for the share? Go to the Advanced Options tab for the share setup and check for the following



My guess is that your setup in Frontview has

Share Folder Owner: <same name as share>
Share Folder Group: nogroup
Share Folder Everyone Rights: none <- Have you changed this?

The above settings would result in the same symptoms as you're seeing.

[Pixeltje]

sphardy wrote:
That's interesting - I've had chance to take a look and I take back some of my previous comments. My apologies for the incorrect information

Apologies accepted 😉 And no offense taken.. thanks for investing time and effort in this 🙂

In the past I've never had success mounting NFS shares via finder but that did not surprise me due to the different way in which NFS works vs AFP & CIFS and that manual and automounting has always worked as expected and what I actually wanted. I therefore have always presumed mounting NFS shares via Finder is just not a supported option.

While NFS servers are still not automatically detected by Finder as CIFS and AFP servers are, it does now seem possible to mount nfs shares via cmd+k - wonder if that is a recent enhancement/fix in OSX? (I'm running 10.6.8 ) Or maybe I just screwed up when originally looking at this a looong time ago

I'm also running 10.6.8, and have tried to mount NFS at 10.6.7 also, but there were no differences. I've just recently got the NV+ and before that i've never had reason to mount NFS, so i really wouldn't know whether it was supposed to work before 10.6.7 🙂

So in finder: CMD+K -> nfs://server/share, results in "server" being listed under Shared items and the nfs share appearing as a mounted volume for that server. The share, by default, gets mounted at /Volumes/share, /Volumes being the default finder mount point for all protocols

True, but the interesting thing is dat the AFP and CIFS shares are being displayed as Jochem_8TB (which is the name of the NAS) and the NFS share appears as 10.0.0.8 (which is the IP adress of the NAS).

So back to your issue, the above discovery suggests you are hitting a permissions issues so what permissions are set for the share? Go to the Advanced Options tab for the share setup and check for the following



My guess is that your setup in Frontview has

Share Folder Owner: <same name as share>
Share Folder Group: nogroup
Share Folder Everyone Rights: none <- Have you changed this?

The above settings would result in the same symptoms as you're seeing.

I'll check this when i get home in about two hours, but i'd say it's set as this right now:

Share folder owner: admin
Share folder group: nogroup (since i've made no groups in addition to the 'users', which is the standard group.

Share folder owner rights: <not editable>
Share folder group rights: (did not change the standard setting)
Share folder everyone rights: (did not change)

Below these fields there's an option to grant acces tot specific hosts, which are my macbook pro and the one from my roommate. (both have fixed IP's in the network, set up in the router)
Then there's just one setting left: in the upper right corner of the screen there's an option for 'standard acces' or something similar to that, I've set this to 'disabled' and thus granting only acces (whether it is read or write) to specific hosts (the two i've described above)

Thanks again, and in about 2 hours i'll post the settings when i've checked them 🙂

[sphardy1]

True, but the interesting thing is dat the AFP and CIFS shares are being displayed as Jochem_8TB (which is the name of the NAS) and the NFS share appears as 10.0.0.8 (which is the IP adress of the NAS).

That is because you are mounting the NFS share via the IP address, not the name (Your previous post stated this)

Overall, your setup looks just fine, including the NFS settings you are using to restrict host access. All symptoms now point to a permissions issue, specifically that "everyone" access is disabled.

Why are you trying to setup NFS access on your mac? NFS can be very, very useful but depending how much you trust your room-mate and anyone else who might have access to your network, NFS may not be a suitable protocol to use if you have data that you do not want others accessing as it is more difficult to secure shares that way vs CIFS and AFP. You may wish to reflect on this.

[Pixeltje]

Why are you trying to setup NFS access on your mac? NFS can be very, very useful but depending how much you trust your room-mate and anyone else who might have access to your network, NFS may not be a suitable protocol to use if you have data that you do not want others accessing as it is more difficult to secure shares that way vs CIFS and AFP. You may wish to reflect on this.

There are two reasons; one is that the NFS share should only share the Media folder to everyone on the network (which has a very strong password and mac-address filtering for access 🙂 ) so movies and music can be shared throughout the house without setting up a useraccount for everyone. The second reason is quite simpel; i just want to know how it works and what the possibilities are 🙂

Thanks again 🙂

[Pixeltje]

Okay, i'm back from work and confused. Please look at the screenshots below..
First; when i enable NFS, i'm able to set a number of ' NFS threads' (as shown on image), what does that mean?


Then, when i've enabled NFS and go to the shares-list to edit the preferences, this is what's there;


These are the options available under the NFS tab;
The .0.2 address is my mbp. Since the screenshot is in Dutch, I'll translate it for you:
top right corner (drop down list): ' standard acces' set to Disabled
First of three fields: Read only hosts: <empty>
Second: Hosts with write permissions: <my IP>
Third: Hosts with Root acces: <my IP>

Then under the "advanced" tab:


And Finder shows:


So it works 🙂

I'd like to know whether or not it's possible to make finder remind this share, so when i get back home, it automatically detects it's there and adds it to the Finder list.

Would you recommend any changes to this setup?

Thanks a lot for your time and knowledge 🙂

[sphardy1]

So it works

Ummm... So why not before? Or maybe it doesn't matter...

I'd like to know whether or not it's possible to make finder remind this share, so when i get back home, it automatically detects it's there and adds it to the Finder list.

Not really - we're back to my original comment that NFS works differently than CIFS/AFP; the "use model" is different.

All file sharing protocols are designed such that multiple users of a host computer can access shares, as well as allowing multiple hosts to access the shares. But to more easily illustrate a key difference, consider just the former - one shared host (your Mac) with multiple user accounts each accessing shares on a NAS

Under AFP/CIFS, each user individually mounts each share separately - authenticating with their username/password each time which registers which user is then accessing the share and determines access rights and permissions.

Under NFS, shares are typically mounted only once at a fixed predefined path and all users access the same path. User permissions are determined based on the UID number associated with the account rather than each user authenticating via username/password

The difference has major implications for file sharing, but also for how shares are typically mounted. For an NFS share to always be available you mount it once (at boot, or on access) to a specific path, and then simply access that path via finder as if it was a local folder. That's where services like autofs come in, automatically mounting the share on demand at the predefined path.

Would you recommend any changes to this setup?

Possibly related to permissions & access rights, but it is heavily dependant on your ultimate needs. Again I'd recommend some general reading if you're not familiar with how NFS controls access and permissions.

[Pixeltje]

You're right. I'm going to read the article you linked to carefully tonight, and then find out whether i still think nfs is the way to go 😉

I don't really know why it works now and didn't work the last time i've tried, but i figure i did something wrong then. Perhaps with the groups or something.. Anyway, it works now and i'm glad it does 🙂 Already makes my life easier as i don't have to set up a user account for a friend coming by tonight 🙂 He can now just access the Media share without me bothering whether my other stuff (Time Machine, tax files etc.) are safe 😉

Thanks again!