mount_nfs.8   [plain text]


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.\"	@(#)mount_nfs.8	8.3 (Berkeley) 3/29/95
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.Dd February 8, 2005
.Dt MOUNT_NFS 8
.Os 
.Sh NAME
.Nm mount_nfs
.Nd mount NFS file systems
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm mount_nfs
.Op Fl 23KLPTUbcdils
.Op Fl I Ar readdirsize
.Op Fl R Ar retrycnt
.Op Fl a Ar maxreadahead
.Op Fl g Ar maxgroups
.Op Fl m Ar realm
.Op Fl o Ar options
.Op Fl r Ar readsize
.Op Fl t Ar timeout
.Op Fl w Ar writesize
.Op Fl x Ar retrans
.Ar rhost: Ns Ar path node
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm mount_nfs
command
calls the
.Xr mount 2
system call to prepare and graft a remote NFS file system (rhost:path)
on to the file system tree at the point
.Ar node.
This command is normally executed by
.Xr mount 8 .
It implements the mount protocol as described in RFC 1094, Appendix A and
.%T "NFS: Network File System Version 3 Protocol Specification" ,
Appendix I.
.Pp
By default,
.Nm
keeps retrying until the mount succeeds.
This behaviour is intended for file systems listed in
.Xr fstab 5
that are critical to the boot process.
For non-critical file systems, the
.Fl b
and
.Fl R
flags provide mechanisms to prevent the boot process from hanging
if the server is unavailable.
.Pp
If the server becomes unresponsive while an NFS file system is
mounted, any new or outstanding file operations on that file system
will hang uninterruptibly until the server comes back (or that NFS
file system is forcibly unmounted).
To modify this default behaviour, see the
.Fl i
and
.Fl s
flags.
.Pp
The options are:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl 2
Use the NFS Version 2 protocol.
.It Fl 3
Use the NFS Version 3 protocol. The default is to try version 3 first, and
fall back to version 2 if the mount fails.
.It Fl I Ar readdirsize
Set the readdir read size to the specified value. The value should normally
be a multiple of DIRBLKSIZ that is <= the read size for the mount.
.It Fl K
Pass Kerberos authenticators to the server for client-to-server
user-credential mapping.
This requires that the kernel be built with the NFSKERB option.
(Refer to the INTERNET-DRAFT titled
.%T "Authentication Mechanisms for ONC RPC" ,
for more information.)
.It Fl L
Do not support NFS file locking operations.
Any attempt to perform file locking operations on this mount will return
the error ENOTSUP regardless of whether or not the NFS server supports
NFS file locking.
.It Fl P
Use a reserved socket port number.
This is useful for mounting servers that require clients to use a
reserved port number on the mistaken belief that this makes NFS
more secure. (For the rare case where the client has a trusted root account
but untrustworthy users and the network cables are in secure areas this does
help, but for normal desktop clients this does not apply.)
.It Fl R Ar retrycnt
Set the retry count for doing the mount to the specified value.
The default is 10000.
.It Fl T
Use TCP transport instead of UDP.
This is recommended for servers that are not on the same LAN cable as
the client.
.It Fl U
Force the mount protocol to use UDP transport, even for TCP NFS mounts.
(Necessary for some old BSD servers.)
.It Fl a Ar maxreadahead
Set the read-ahead count to the specified value.  The default is 4.
This may be in the range of 0 - 16, and determines how many blocks
will be read ahead when a large file is being read sequentially.
Trying larger values for this is suggested for
mounts with a large bandwidth * delay product.
.It Fl b
If an initial attempt to contact the server fails, fork off a child to keep
trying the mount in the background.
Useful for
.Xr fstab 5 ,
where the file system mount is not critical to multiuser operation.
.It Fl c
For UDP mount points, do not do a
.Xr connect 2 .
This must be used for servers that do not reply to requests from the
standard NFS port number 2049.  It may also be required for servers
with more than one IP address if replies come from an address other
than the one specified in the requests.
.It Fl d
Turn off the dynamic retransmit timeout estimator.
This may be useful for UDP mounts that exhibit high retry rates,
since it is possible that the dynamically estimated timeout interval is too
short.
.It Fl g Ar maxgroups
Set the maximum size of the group list for the credentials to the
specified value.
This should be used for mounts on old servers that cannot handle a
group list size of 16, as specified in RFC 1057.
Try 8, if users in a lot of groups cannot get a response from the mount
point.
.It Fl i
Make the mount interruptible, which implies that file system calls that
are delayed due to an unresponsive server will fail with EINTR when a
termination signal is posted for the process.
.It Fl l
Used with NFSv3 to specify that the \fBReaddirPlus\fR RPC should
be used.
This option reduces RPC traffic for cases such as
.Dq "ls -l" ,
but tends to flood the attribute and name caches with prefetched entries.
Try this option and see whether performance improves or degrades. Probably
most useful for client to server network interconnects with a large bandwidth
times delay product.
.It Fl m Ar realm
Set the Kerberos realm to the string argument.
Used with the
.Fl K
option for mounts to other realms.
This requires that the kernel be built with the NFSKERB option.
.It Fl o
Options are specified with a
.Fl o
flag followed by a comma separated string of options.
See the
.Xr mount 8
man page for possible options and their meanings.
The following NFS-specific options are also available:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It bg
The same as
.Fl b .
Retry mount in background.
.It noconn
The same as 
.Fl c .
Do not connect UDP sockets.
.It dumbtimer
The same as
.Fl d .
Turn off the dynamic retransmit timeout estimator.
.It intr
The same as
.Fl i .
Make the mount interruptible.
.It nfsv2
The same as
.Fl 2 .
Use the NFS Version 2 protocol.
.It nfsv3
The same as
.Fl 3 .
Use the NFS Version 3 protocol.
.It nfsvers Ns = Ns Aq Ar num
.It vers Ns = Ns Aq Ar num
Set the NFS protocol version number -
2 for NFSv2 and 3 for NFSv3.
.It rdirplus
The same as
.Fl l .
Use the \fBReaddirPlus\fR RPC with NFSv3
.It resvport
The same as
.Fl P .
Use a reserved socket port number.
.It soft
The same as
.Fl s .
Make the mount soft.  Fail file system calls after a number of retries.
.It udp
Use UDP transport.  This is currently the default.
.It tcp
The same as
.Fl T .
Use TCP transport instead of UDP.
.It mntudp
The same as
.Fl U .
Force the mount protocol to use UDP transport, even for TCP NFS mounts.
.It acregmin Ns = Ns Aq Ar seconds
.It acregmax Ns = Ns Aq Ar seconds
.It acdirmin Ns = Ns Aq Ar seconds
.It acdirmax Ns = Ns Aq Ar seconds
These options set the minimum and maximum attribute cache timeouts for
directories and "regular" (non-directory) files.  The default minimum
is 5 seconds and the default maximum is 60 seconds.  Setting both the
mininum and maximum to zero will disable attribute caching.  The 
algorithm to calculate the timeout is based on the age of the file or
directory.  The older it is, the longer the attribute cache is considered
valid, subject to the limits above.
.It actimeo Ns = Ns Aq Ar seconds
Set all minimum and maximum attribute cache timeouts to the same value.
.It noac
Disable attribute caching.  This is equivalent to setting
.Em actimeo
to 0.
.It nolocks
.It nolockd
.It nolock
.It nonlm
The same as
.Fl L .
Do not support NFS file locking operations.
.It rsize Ns = Ns Aq Ar readsize
The same as
.Fl r .
Set the read data size to the specified value.
.It wsize Ns = Ns Aq Ar writesize
The same as
.Fl w .
Set the write data size to the specified value.
.It rwsize Ns = Ns Aq Ar size
Set both the read data size and write data size to the specified value.
.It readahead Ns = Ns Aq Ar maxreadahead
The same as
.Fl a .
Set the maximum read-ahead count to the specified value.
.It timeo Ns = Ns Aq Ar timeout
The same as
.Fl t .
Set the initial retransmit timeout.
.It retrans Ns = Ns Aq Ar count
The same as
.Fl x .
Set the retransmit timeout count for soft mounts.
.El
.It Fl r Ar readsize
Set the read data size to the specified value.
The default is 8192 for UDP mounts and 16384 for TCP mounts.
It should normally be a power of 2 greater than or equal to 1024.
Values greater than 4096 should be multiples of 4096.
It may need to be lowered for UDP mounts when the
.Dq "fragments dropped due to timeout"
value is getting large while actively using a mount point.
(Use
.Xr netstat 1
with the
.Fl s
option to see what the
.Dq "fragments dropped due to timeout"
value is.)
See the
.Fl w
option as well.
.It Fl s
A soft mount, which implies that file system calls will fail
after \fBRetry\fR round trip timeout intervals.
.It Fl t Ar timeout
Set the initial retransmit timeout to the specified value.
May be useful for fine tuning UDP mounts over internetworks
with high packet loss rates or an overloaded server.
Try increasing the interval if
.Xr nfsstat 1
shows high retransmit rates while the file system is active or reducing the
value if there is a low retransmit rate but long response delay observed.
(Normally, the -d option should be specified when using this option to manually
tune the timeout
interval.)
.It Fl w Ar writesize
Set the write data size to the specified value.
Ditto the comments w.r.t. the
.Fl r
option, but using the
.Dq "fragments dropped due to timeout"
value on the server instead of the client.
Note that both the
.Fl r
and
.Fl w
options should only be used as a last ditch effort at improving performance
when mounting servers that do not support TCP mounts.
.It Fl x Ar retrans
Set the retransmit timeout count for soft mounts to the specified value.
.El
.Sh EXAMPLES
The simplest way to invoke
.Nm
is with a command like:
.Pp
.Dl "mount remotehost:/filesystem /localmountpoint
or:
.Dl "mount -t nfs remotehost:/filesystem /localmountpoint
.Pp
It is also possible to automatically mount file systems at boot from your
.Pa /etc/fstab
by using a line like:
.Pp
.Dl "remotehost:/home /home nfs rw 0 0
.Sh PERFORMANCE
As can be derived from the comments accompanying the options, performance
tuning of
.Tn NFS
can be a non-trivial task.
Here are some common points
to watch:
.Bl -bullet -width indent
.It
Increasing the read and write size with the
.Fl r
and
.Fl w
options respectively will increase throughput if the network
interface can handle the larger packet sizes.
.Pp
The default read and write sizes are 8K when using
.Tn UDP ,
and 16K when using
.Tn TCP .
Values over 16K are only supported for
.Tn TCP ,
where 60K is the maximum.
.Pp
Any value over 32K is unlikely to get you more performance, unless
you have a very fast network.
.It
If the network interface cannot handle larger packet sizes or a
long train of back to back packets, you may see low performance
figures or even temporary hangups during
.Tn NFS
activity.
.Pp
This can especially happen with lossy network connections
(e.g. wireless networks) which can lead to a lot of dropped packets.
.Pp
In this case, decreasing the read and write size, using
.Tn TCP ,
or a combination of both will usually lead to better throughput.
.It
For connections that are not on the same
.Tn LAN ,
and/or may experience packet loss, using
.Tn TCP
is strongly recommended.
.El
.Sh ERRORS
Some common problems with
.Nm
can be difficult for first time users to understand.
.Pp
.Dl "mount_nfs: can't access /foo: Permission denied
.Pp
This message means that the remote host is either not exporting
the file system you requested or is not exporting it to your host.
If you believe the remote host is indeed exporting a file system to you,
make sure the
.Xr exports 5
file is exporting the proper directories.
The program
.Xr showmount 8
can be used to see a server's exports list.
The command
.Dq "showmount -e remotehostname"
will display what file systems the remote host is exporting.
.Pp
A common mistake is that
.Xr mountd 8
will not export a file system with the
.Fl alldirs
option, unless it
is a mount point on the exporting host.
It is not possible to remotely
mount a subdirectory of an exported mount, unless it is exported with the
.Fl alldirs
option.
.Pp
The following error:
.Pp
.Dl "NFS Portmap: RPC: Program not registered
.Pp
means that the remote host is not running
.Xr mountd 8 .
The program
.Xr rpcinfo 8
can be used to determine if the remote host is running nfsd, and mountd by issuing
the command:
.Pp
.Dl rpcinfo -p remotehostname
.Pp
If the remote host is running nfsd, mountd, rpc.statd,
and rpc.lockd it would display:
.Pp
.Dl "program vers proto   port
.Dl " 100000    2   tcp    111  portmapper
.Dl " 100000    2   udp    111  portmapper
.Dl " 100005    1   udp    950  mountd
.Dl " 100005    3   udp    950  mountd
.Dl " 100005    1   tcp    884  mountd
.Dl " 100005    3   tcp    884  mountd
.Dl " 100003    2   udp   2049  nfs
.Dl " 100003    3   udp   2049  nfs
.Dl " 100003    2   tcp   2049  nfs
.Dl " 100003    3   tcp   2049  nfs
.Dl " 100024    1   udp    644  status
.Dl " 100024    1   tcp    918  status
.Dl " 100021    0   udp    630  nlockmgr
.Dl " 100021    1   udp    630  nlockmgr
.Dl " 100021    3   udp    630  nlockmgr
.Dl " 100021    4   udp    630  nlockmgr
.Dl " 100021    0   tcp    917  nlockmgr
.Dl " 100021    1   tcp    917  nlockmgr
.Dl " 100021    3   tcp    917  nlockmgr
.Dl " 100021    4   tcp    917  nlockmgr
.Pp
The error:
.Pp
.Dl "mount_nfs: can't get net id for host
.Pp
indicates that
.Nm
cannot resolve the name of the remote host.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr mount 2 ,
.Xr unmount 2 ,
.Xr fstab 5 ,
.Xr mount 8,
.Xr umount 8,
.Xr nfsstat 1 ,
.Xr netstat 1 ,
.Xr rpcinfo 8 ,
.Xr showmount 8 ,
.Xr automount 8
.Sh CAVEATS
An NFS server shouldn't loopback-mount its own exported file systems because
it's fundamentally prone to deadlock.