.\" $NetBSD: mount_nfs.8,v 1.35 2007/06/01 17:43:19 ginsbach Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. 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IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)mount_nfs.8 8.3 (Berkeley) 3/29/95 .\" .Dd June 1, 2007 .Dt MOUNT_NFS 8 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm mount_nfs .Nd mount NFS file systems .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Bk -words .Op Fl 23bCcdilPpqsTUX .Ek .Bk -words .Op Fl a Ar maxreadahead .Ek .Bk -words .Op Fl D Ar deadthresh .Ek .Bk -words .Op Fl g Ar maxgroups .Ek .Bk -words .Op Fl I Ar readdirsize .Ek .Bk -words .Op Fl L Ar leaseterm .Ek .Bk -words .Op Fl o Ar options .Ek .Bk -words .Op Fl R Ar retrycnt .Ek .Bk -words .Op Fl r Ar readsize .Ek .Bk -words .Op Fl t Ar timeout .Ek .Bk -words .Op Fl w Ar writesize .Ek .Bk -words .Op Fl x Ar retrans .Ek .Ar rhost:path node .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm command calls the .Xr mount 2 system call to prepare and graft a remote .Tn NFS file system (rhost:path) on to the file system tree at the mount point .Ar node . The directory specified by .Ar node is converted to an absolute path before use. 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 The options are: .Bl -tag -width indent .It Fl 2 Use the .Tn NFS Version 2 protocol. .It Fl 3 Use the .Tn NFS Version 3 protocol. The default is to try version 3 first, and fall back to version 2 if the mount fails. .It Fl a Ar maxreadahead Set the read-ahead count to the specified value. This may be in the range of 0 - 4, and determines how many blocks will be read ahead when a large file is being read sequentially. Trying a value greater than 1 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 filesystem mount is not critical to multiuser operation. .It Fl C For .Tn UDP mount points, do a .Xr connect 2 . Although this flag increases the efficiency of .Tn UDP mounts it cannot be used for servers that do not reply to requests from the standard .Tn NFS port number 2049, or for servers with multiple network interfaces. In these cases if the socket is connected and the server replies from a different port number or a different network interface the client will get ICMP port unreachable and the mount will hang. .It Fl c For .Tn UDP mount points, do not do a .Xr connect 2 . This flag is deprecated and connectionless .Tn UDP mounts are the default. .It Fl D Ar deadthresh Set the .Dq "dead server threshold" to the specified number of round trip timeout intervals. After a .Dq "dead server threshold" of retransmit timeouts, .Dq "not responding" message is printed to a tty. .It Fl d Turn off the dynamic retransmit timeout estimator. This may be useful for .Tn 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 response from the mount point. .It Fl I Ar readdirsize Set the readdir read size to the specified value. The value should normally be a multiple of .Dv DIRBLKSIZ that is \*[Le] the read size for the mount. .It Fl i Make the mount interruptible, which implies that file system calls that are delayed due to an unresponsive server will fail with .Er EINTR when a termination signal is posted for the process. .It Fl L Ar leaseterm Ignored. It used to be .Tn NQNFS lease term. .It Fl l Used with .Tn NFS Version 3 to specify that the .Fn ReaddirPlus .Tn RPC should be used. This option reduces .Tn RPC traffic for cases such as .Ic "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 o Ar options 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. .Pp The following .Tn NFS specific options are also available: .Bl -tag -width indent .It Cm bg Same as .Fl b . .It Cm conn Same as .Fl C . .It Cm deadthresh Ns = Ns Aq Ar deadthresh Same as .Fl D Ar deadthresh . .It Cm dumbtimer Same as .Fl d . .It Cm intr Same as .Fl i . .It Cm leaseterm Ns = Ns Aq Ar leaseterm Same as .Fl L Ar leaseterm . .It Cm maxgrps Ns = Ns Aq Ar maxgroups Same as .Fl g Ar maxgroups . .It Cm mntudp Same as .Fl U . .It Cm nfsv2 Same as .Fl 2 . .It Cm nfsv3 Same as .Fl 3 . .It Cm noresvport Same as .Fl p . .It Cm nqnfs Same as .Fl q . .It Cm port Ns = Ns Aq Ar portnumber Use the specified port number for .Tn NFS requests. The default is to query the portmapper for the .Tn NFS port. .It Cm rdirplus Same as .Fl l . .It Cm readahead Ns = Ns Aq Ar maxreadahead Same as .Fl a Ar maxreadahead . .It Cm rsize Ns = Ns Aq Ar readsize Same as .Fl -r Ar readsize . .It Cm soft Same as .Fl s . .It Cm tcp Same as .Fl T . .It Cm timeo Ns = Ns Aq Ar timeout Same as .Fl t Ar timeout . .It Cm wsize Ns = Ns Aq Ar writesize Same as .Fl w Ar writesize . .El .It Fl P Use a reserved socket port number. This is the default, and available for backwards compatibility purposes only. .It Fl p Do not use a reserved port number for RPCs. This option is provided only to be able to mimic the old default behavior of not using a reserved port, and should rarely be useful. .It Fl q A synonym of .Fl 3 . It used to specify .Tn NQNFS . .It Fl R Ar retrycnt Set the retry count for doing the mount to the specified value. .It Fl r Ar readsize Set the read data size to the specified value in bytes. It should normally be a power of 2 greater than or equal to 1024. .Pp This should be used for .Tn UDP mounts when the .Dq "fragments dropped after 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 after timeout" value is. See the .Nm .Fl w option also. .It Fl s A soft mount, which implies that file system calls will fail after .Ar retrycnt round trip timeout intervals. .It Fl T Use .Tn TCP transport instead of .Tn UDP . This is recommended for servers that are not on the same physical network as the client. Not all .Tn NFS servers, especially not old ones, support this. .It Fl t Ar timeout Set the initial retransmit timeout to the specified value. May be useful for fine tuning .Tn 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 U Force the mount protocol to use .Tn UDP transport, even for .Tn TCP .Tn NFS mounts. This is necessary for some old .Bx servers. .It Fl w Ar writesize Set the write data size to the specified value in bytes. .Pp The same logic applies for use of this option as with the .Nm .Fl r option, but using the .Dq "fragments dropped after timeout" value on the .Tn NFS 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 .Tn TCP mounts. .It Fl X Perform 32 \*[Lt]-\*[Gt] 64 bit directory cookie translation for version 3 mounts. This may be need in the case of a server using the upper 32 bits of version 3 directory cookies, and when you are running emulated binaries that access such a filesystem. Native .Nx binaries will never need this option. This option introduces some overhead. .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 filesystems 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 -offset 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 size for .Tn NFS version 2 is 8K when using .Tn UDP , 64K when using .Tn TCP . .Pp The default size for .Tn NFS version 3 is platform dependent: on .Nx Ns /i386 , the default is 32K, for other platforms it is 8K. Values over 32K are only supported for .Tn TCP , where 64K 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 older .Tn Ethernet network interfaces. What happens is that either the receive buffer on the network interface on the client side is overflowing, or that similar events occur on the server, leading 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. Should you need to decrease the read and write size for all your .Tn NFS mounts because of a slow .Tn Ethernet network interface .Pq e.g. a USB 1.1 to 10/100 Tn Ethernet network interface , you can use .Pp .Bl -ohang -compact .It Cd options NFS_RSIZE=value .It Cd options NFS_WSIZE=value .El .Pp in your kernel .Xr config 1 file to avoid having do specify the sizes for all mounts. .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 filesystem you requested, or is not exporting it to your host. If you believe the remote host is indeed exporting a filesystem to you, make sure the .Xr exports 5 file is exporting the proper directories. .Pp A common mistake is that .Xr mountd 8 will not export a filesystem 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, and mountd, it would display: .Pp .Dl "100005 3 udp 719 mountd .Dl "100005 1 tcp 720 mountd .Dl "100005 3 tcp 720 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 .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 nfsstat 1 , .Xr mount 2 , .Xr unmount 2 , .Xr options 4 , .Xr exports 5 , .Xr fstab 5 , .Xr mount 8 , .Xr mountd 8 , .Xr rpcinfo 8 .Rs .%R RFC 1094 .%D March 1989 .%T "NFS: Network File System Protocol specification" .Re .Rs .%R RFC 2623 .%D June 1999 .%T "NFS Version 2 and Version 3 Security Issues and the NFS Protocol's Use of RPCSEC_GCC and Kerberos V5" .Re .Rs .%R RFC 2624 .%D June 1999 .%T "NFS Version 4 Design Considerations" .Re .Rs .%R RFC 2695 .%D September 1999 .%T "Authentication Mechanisms for ONC RPC" .Re .Sh CAVEATS An NFS server shouldn't loopback-mount its own exported file systems because it's fundamentally prone to deadlock.