MOUNT_NFS(8)

NAME
mount_nfs - mount nfs file systems

SYNOPSIS
[-23KPTUbcCdilqs] [-D deadthresh] [-I readdirsize] [-L leaseterm] [-R retrycnt] [-a maxreadahead] [-g maxgroups] [-m realm] [-o options] [-r readsize] [-t timeout] [-w writesize] [-x retrans] rhost:path node

DESCRIPTION
The mount_nfs command calls the mount(2) system call to prepare and graft a remote nfs file system (rhost:path) on to the file system tree at the point node. This command is normally executed by mount(8). It implements the mount protocol as described in RFC 1094, Appendix A and Appendix I.

The options are:

-2  Use the NFS Version 2 protocol.

-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.

-D  Used with NQNFS to set the “dead server threshold” to the specified number of round trip timeout intervals. After a “dead server threshold” of retransmit timeouts, cached data for the unresponsive server is assumed to still be valid. Values may be set in the range of 1 - 9, with 9 referring to an “infinite dead threshold” (i.e. never assume cached data still valid). This option is not generally recommended and is really an experimental feature.

-I  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.

-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 for more information.)

-L  Used with NQNFS to set the lease term to the specified number of seconds. Only use this argument for mounts with a large round trip delay. Values are normally in the 10-30 second range.

-P  Use a reserved socket port number. This is the default, and available for backwards compatibility purposes only.

-R  Set the retry count for doing the mount to the specified value.

-T  Use TCP transport instead of UDP. This is recommended for servers that are not on the same LAN cable as the client. (NB: This is NOT supported by most non BSD servers.)

-U  Force the mount protocol to use UDP transport, even for TCP NFS mounts. (Necessary for some old BSD servers.)

-X  Perform 32 <-> 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 v3 directory cookies, and when you are running emulated binaries that access such a filesystem. Native NetBSD binaries will never need this option. This option introduces some overhead.

-a  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.

-b  If an initial attempt to contact the server fails, fork off a child to keep trying the mount in the background. Useful for fstab(5), where the filesystem mount is not critical to multiuser operation.

-c  For UDP mount points, do not do a connect(2). This flag is deprecated and connectionless UDP mounts are the default.

-C  For UDP mount points, do a connect(2). Although this flag increases the efficiency of UDP mounts it cannot be used for servers that do not reply to requests from the standard 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.

-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.

-g  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.

-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.

-l  Used with NQNFS and NFSV3 to specify that the ReaddirPlus RPC should be used. This option reduces RPC traffic for cases such as “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.

-m  Set the Kerberos realm to the string argument. Used with the -K option for mounts to other realms.

-o  Options are specified with a -o flag followed by a comma separated string of options. See the mount(8) man page for possible options and their meanings.

-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.

-q  Use the leasing extensions to the NFS Version 3 protocol to maintain cache consistency. This protocol version 2 revision to Not Quite Nfs (NQNFS) is only supported by this updated release of NFS code. It is not backwards compatible with the version 1 NQNFS protocol that was part of the first release of 4.4BSD Lite. To interoperate with a first release 4.4BSD Lite NFS system you will have to avoid this option until you have had an opportunity to upgrade the NFS code to release 2 of 4.4BSD Lite on all your systems.

-r  Set the read data size to the specified value. It should normally be a power of 2 greater than or equal to 1024. This should be used for UDP mounts when the “fragments dropped due to timeout” value is getting large while actively using a mount point. (Use netstat(1) with the -s option to see what the “fragments dropped due to timeout” value is.) See the -w option as well.

-s  A soft mount, which implies that file system calls will fail after Retry round trip timeout intervals.

-t  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 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.)

-w  Set the write data size to the specified value. Ditto the comments w.r.t. the -r option, but using the “fragments dropped due to timeout” value on the server instead of the client. Note that both the -r and -w options should only be used as a last ditch effort at improving performance when mounting servers that do not support TCP mounts.

-x  Set the retransmit timeout count for soft mounts to the specified value.

EXAMPLES
The simplest way to invoke mount_nfs is with a command like:

    mount remotehost:/filesystem /localmountpoint
or:
    mount -t nfs remotehost:/filesystem /localmountpoint

It is also possible to automaticly mount filesystems at boot from your /etc/fstab by using a line like:

    remotehost:/home /home nfs rw 0 0

ERRORS
Some common problems with mount_nfs can be difficult for first time users to understand.

    mount_nfs: can't access /foo: Permission denied

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 exports(5) file is exporting the proper directories. A common mistake is that mountd will not export a filesystem with the -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 -alldirs option.

The following error:

    NFS Portmap: RPC: Program not registered

means that the remote host is not running mountd(8). The program rpcinfo(8) can be used to determine if the remote host is running nfsd, and mountd by issuing the command:

    rpcinfo -p remotehostname

If the remote host is running nfsd, and mountd, it would display:

    100005    3   udp    719  mountd
    100005    1   tcp    720  mountd
    100005    3   tcp    720  mountd
    100003    2   udp   2049  nfs
    100003    3   udp   2049  nfs
    100003    2   tcp   2049  nfs
    100003    3   tcp   2049  nfs

The error:

    mount_nfs: can't get net id for host

indicates that mount_nfs cannot resolve the name of the remote host.

SEE ALSO
mount(2), unmount(2), exports(5), fstab(5), mount(8), mountd(8), rpcinfo(8)

BUGS
Due to the way that Sun RPC is implemented on top of UDP (unreliable datagram) transport, tuning such mounts is really a black art that can only be expected to have limited success. For clients mounting servers that are not on the same LAN cable or that tend to be overloaded, TCP transport is strongly recommended, but unfortunately this is restricted to mostly 4.4BSD derived servers.