09-25-2006, 11:23 AM

When I first got my Mac a few months ago, as part of trying out everything Mac OS X was capable of, I tried out setting it up as an NFS server, so that other computers in the house could mount the Mac hard drive as an NFS volume. Mac OS X would seem to support this, and even the "the Missing Manual" book for Tiger had a nice section on how to do this.

The problem is it never worked. I set up the Mac just as the above book (and a lot of posts in these forums) said and tried it out. I have two linux boxes at home along with my Mac, and set one up as an NFS client and the other as an NFS server. I used this setup to be sure that both my NFS client *and* NFS servers were set up correctly on the two Linux platforms (one is Vector Linux 5.1, the other is Arch Linux 0.7.1). I was successfully able to have the Vector box mount the Arch disk, or if I reversed their roles, have the Arch box mount the Vector disk. So, with two different Linux distros, based on wholly different geneologies (i.e they are not both derived from the same - potentially unique - root, such as Debian), it all worked. So, I am pretty sure that the Linux end of this is set up correctly. But the Mac would not successfully act as a server or a client. I never got anywhere with it.

It is now many months later, and I feel a lot more confident about my Mac skills. I am ready to try this again. I can (and have) searched these forums and found LOTS of information on this topic, but does anyone actually have this WORKING right now? ...not an opinion on how it might work, but actually HAVE it working right now? If you do, would you be so kind as to post the "recipe" you used to set up your Mac as either an NFS server (preferred) or at least as an NFS client? Thanks!

By the way, I have a shiny new Ubuntu (Dapper Drake) release running on one of my two PCs at this point, so I would be trying to connect up Mac OS X and Ubuntu 6.06 via NFS. Any and all pointers much appreciated!

09-25-2006, 01:32 PM

I don't know this for sure, but I believe that Mao OS X only has the NFS client software and Mac OS X server has the NFS server software. I have not checked my system, but check and see if you have nfsd and biod on your system.

09-25-2006, 09:21 PM

That is the scary part, I do have nfsd, plus all the other software elements that make up an NFS server. nfsd, lockd and a few others seem to be started and running by default. If I check Activity Monitor, they are always there. I have read all sorts of contradictory posts, some saying it works, some saying it is just broken and some in the middle. That's why I thought I would ask if anyone reading these forums has it going right now...

I am going to take one more try at this, and if I am successful, I will post the "recipe" here. I will retry both client and server modes. If all else fails, I will have to fall back to Windows SMB protocol and try that - yuchhhh! I seem to recall that Mac's support this as well.