• NFS HOWTO (Apple MacOSX)

NFS on Mac OS X
Once Mac OS X is up and running, it pulls all its configuration information out of the Netinfo Database. This is kind of neat and IMHO has a lot of good potential. However, it is kind of a change for people with a Unix background who like to edit configuration files by hand.
Fortunately, you can still do so for many things using nidump(8) and niload(8) . In any case, you can still do all your configuration work from the command line using tools like niutil(1) or nicl(1) .
Mac OS X has nice configuration tools for most settings that users would like to modify. - What is dearly missing is a tool to configure NFS exports on Mac OS X in a convenient way.

exportfs for Mac OS X

Overview

Have you ever wished that you could do something like

exportfs -a /etc/exports

on your Mac OS X box and it would just "Do The Right Thing"?
Well, now you can do exactly this using a litte script I've hacked together after having spent too much time fiddling with Netinfo DB entries by hand.
The script is based on the information compiled by J. T. Frey in this document.

Download

Here is exportfs for Mac OS X or Darwin.

Functionality

Here is what it can do for you:

exportfs v0.12, (C) 2002, Christian Czezatke Usage:
exportfs [-a ] [-c ] [-r ] [-l] [-s ] [-p] [-h]
Either one of the options listed above can be specified.
-a : exports everything from the listed exports file (-- : read from stdin)
See exports(5) for more info
-c : processes an export entry specified at the command line. (See
exports(5) for valid export entries
-r : removes a given export entry (example: exportfs -r /Users)
-l : lists all currently exported filesystems (check with showmount -e
whether NFS is happy)
-s : show all the properties for a given export
-p : Removes all export entries
-h : Shows this usage message

Known Limitations

There are two things that I'm aware of that are described in exports(5) , but do not work with exportfs :
• You cannot specify more than one exported directory in one line; i.e. the example:
/usr /usr/local -maproot=0:10 friends
from the exports manpage will not work. It has to be re-written as:
/usr -maproot=0:10 friends
/usr -maproot=0:10 friends
• The -alldirs option is unsupported. - This is not a real limitation in exportfs , but in the Mac OS X mountd . Altough this option is described in exports(5) ,mountd does not know how to handle it.

Installation

Simple:
• Download exportfs . The current version is 0.12 (Nov. 12th, 2002).
• In the command line, get root priviliges using sudo -s
• Copy the script to a convenient location, for example /usr/sbin using cp exportfs /usr/sbin
• Make the script executable: chmod u+x /usr/sbin/exportfs

Examples

(Of course all this must be done with root privilges using sudo -s .)
On my box, I have a very simple /etc/exports that looks like this:

/Users -maproot=nobody -network=192.168.2.0 -mask=255.255.255.0
/Volumes/Data -maproot=nobody -ro holmes

This will allow each box in my LAN (192.168.2.XXX) to mount the /Users directory from the Mac. Furthermore, /Volumes/Data is exported read-only for a box named holmes .
After having created this /etc/exports file, you need to run exportfs in order to create the necessary entries in the Netinfo DB:

./exportfs -a /etc/exports

After that, you can use showmount in order to verify that mountd is happy with your export entries ( exportfs will automatically send a HUP signal to your mountd , so that it will recognize the configuration changes):

#showmount -e
Exports list on localhost:
/Volumes/Data holmes
/Users 192.168.2.0

If you want to remove an export entry (let's say the /Volumes/Data entry, for example, just do a:

#exportfs -r /Volumes/Data

You can use exportfs -l at any time, to see which export entries are currently registered in the Netinfo DB.
You can also use exportfs to create export entries on the fly: This is convenient if you want to give anoter computer in your LAN access to a CD (or even a disk image), for example.
Let's say I've just inserted a CD-ROM in the drive on my Mac and I want to give the box notebook access to this CD-ROM.
First, I have to figure out where OS X mounted the CD: Just use /sbin/mount to figure this out:

#/sbin/mount
.
.
.
/dev/disk2s1s2 on /Volumes/MY_CD_NAME

You can then do a

#exportfs -c /Volumes/MY_CD_NAME -ro notebook

In order to remove the export entry for the CD when you're done with it, just do a

#exportfs -r /Volumes/MY_CD_NAME

Troubleshooting

If you are having problems getting this to work
• Verify that you have actually created the Netinfo DB entries using exportfs -l
• Check /var/log/system.log for error messages from mountd . If mountd complains about errors, use exportfs -s on the entry that mountd was complaning about.
• Make sure that portmap ,mountd and nfsd are running. - If you don't know enough Unix stuff to know how to do this, just reboot Mac OS X and it will automatically start these services for you once you have created the export entries in the Netinfo DB with exportfs .