NFS Automount Configuration

From The Grotto

OS X NFS Automount Configuration =

This procedure was verified on OS X 10.4.8. Other versions may have variations. For example it is known that older versions of OS X do not use "vfstype" to indicate the file system type but use some other property name.

Note: This method was obsoleted with the release of OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Use the Directory Utility (Advanced Settings) to create auto mounts.

Step 1:

Startup /Applications/Utilities/Netinfo and choose the "mount" directory. Create a mount point by adding a subdirectory to this directory.

The "name" property will automatically be created. Change its value to the name of the filesystem mount in the form of filesystemserver:/mountpoint. On my HP Mediavault all of the shares on the default volume are found at /shares/Volume1/sharename. Thus the full entry is mediavaulthostname:/shares/Volume1/sharename. If you are not sure of the full path to the share you can use telnet to logon to theHP Mediavault and determine the path to the sharepoint. On my unit the reiserfs volumes were under /shares and the FAT32 volumes were under /foreign\ shares.

Now that you have a mount point defined you need to configure it with options. Use the "Add Property" and "Add Value" commands to add these options. Specifically, you need to define the nfs mount options "opts", the file system type "vfstype", and the local mount point "dir".

This is what my first mount point looks like when I am done.

Save your changes either by quitting the Netinfo application and saying "Yes" when it prompts you for saves or choose "Domain/Save Changes".

Now you need to create the local mount points. Using my example above I do the following:

sudo mkdir -p /nfs/media

Note that I only create the directories, not the mount point. The mount point will be created by the automounter.

Now, notify the automounter that there is a new configuration:

sudo killall -1 automounter

Now look in /nfs/media/movies and you should see your HP Mediavault files.

NFS Option Used

-s 1000 Soft Mount: if there are network errors the client will gracefully disconnect from the network drive. However, if you are writing to a file you may only partially write it.

ro Read-only: Since I used a soft mount I decided to force the access to be read-only.

-P Use protected socket: this is required to make the mount successful.

-b Do any mounting on a background thread. This speeds things up when starting up if there is a slow connection.

Additional Tips

• If you are runnning MediaVault firmware 1.2.5.6 or later be sure that the shares you want to use have Network Computers(NFS)'

1000 ' turned on. This option is found when you create the share or when you modify the share in the Shared Folder menu item.

• You can avoid having to manually create the mount points if you set all your mount points to be in /Network. For example: dir=/Network/FileShare. Thanks to Michael Heinz for this tip.