NFS exports and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
My shiny new MacBook with 10.5 Leopard arrived the other day so I’ve been trying to get it all set up and working. Only problem is that, as commenter Matt point out in his comments to this post, NFS Manager hasn’t been updated yet. This post on Mac OS X Hints suggests that setting up NFS shares is very easy, but it does assume a certain amount of knowledge.
I was having the same issues as the chap in this thread on MPC Forums. I had followed all the necessary instructions, but still no dice. Here’s what I had to do to get it working.
To create and /etc/exports file:
sudo vi /etc/exports
once in vi, you need to hit I to enter insert mode. Then you can create your file.
/Users/tismey/Movies -maproot=tismey -network 10.0.0.0 -mask 255.255.0.0
What this means is:
I am sharing the directory /Users/tismey/Movies
The -maproot switch maps the root NFS User to my admin user on my machine – tismey.
Using the -network and -mask switches I am sharing the directory to any machine on my internal network (I use the standard Airport 10.0.x.x addressing)
Once done, hit ESC to exit insert mode, then
:wq!
to exit vi and write the file.
You can then check that the file is correct by running
sudo nfsd checkexports
If this produces no output, then all is right with the world. When I ran this, it spotted that I’d actually got a typo in the file (timsey not tismey), and it gave the error ‘Unknown User’.
However, running
showmount -e
was showing no output, so something still wasn’t right. I had a closer look at the options available to nsfd, and thought I would try
sudo nfsd update
Once I’d done this, the output from showmount was
Exports list on localhost:
/Users/tismey/Movies 10.0.0.0
Success!! A few minutes later and I was successfully streaming from my MacBook to my TViX!
COMMENTS / 31 COMMENTS
revolution34 » Blog Archive » NFS Manager v3.0 available for Leopard, Mar 05 08 at 4:48 pm[...] NFS Manager v3.0 is now available to put a shiny GUI on your NFS Exports under Leopard. I haven’t tried it because my NFS Exports are all set up as detailed in this post and I’m not messing with them now!! [...]
matt, Dec 08 07 at 6:51 pmGood work there Tismey. It’s still not working for me and I followed your advice to the letter, the mounts are showing with showmount -e but the tvix just won’t see them (I’ve got the IP address of the desktop mac and the full path name /Users/matthew/matthewtv but no go) tried turning off the mac Firewall but that doesn’t help either, I don’t use wireless just ethernet to a Livebox. I think I might have to go and post on the MPC thread
tismey, Dec 08 07 at 7:41 pmHmm… that’s really strange, because it worked for me first time. Can you post the content of your /etc/exports?
matt, Dec 10 07 at 6:12 pm# This file originally generated by SystemMigration on Sat Oct 27 19:08:04 PDT 2007
### [ Begin Server Admin managed exports. Do Not Edit.
/Users/matthew/matthewtv -maproot=matthew -network 192.168.1.0 -mask 255.255.255.0
### ] End Server Admin managed exports.
~Here’s a c&p of the pertinent part Tismey. When I do checkmount I get nothing (which is good), when I do showmount -e I get:
Exports list on localhost:
/Users/matthew/matthewtv 192.168.1.0(I have static IPs on the tvix: 192.168.1.4 and the Mac: 192.168.1.2 and the firewall is turned off, 192.168.1.2 is the NFS server ip I’ve used on the TVix and /User/matthew/matthewtv is the path). It’s all rather strange. I tried pinging the TVIx and I got a response so it’s on the network. But I’ve hit the limit of my Unix skills
tismey, Dec 11 07 at 6:01 pmHmm… Everything here looks like it matches my setup, with one exception, which could be worth trying – I have the path in my TViX settings as Users/tismey/Movies, NOT /Users/tismey/Movies. Maybe that makes a difference?
Do you have another machine that you could try mounting the NFS export on?
tim, Dec 16 07 at 7:19 amHi,
How might I adapt this so that I can create a shared movies folder (in the shared folder above the Users folder) so that every user on the one machine can access it? In fact, I want the Pictures, Music and Movies folders that are in each user’s home directory to be shared. I have Sorted the Pictures and Music folder so that two users have the same itunes and iphoto etc. But movies is trickier for some reason. Ideally, I’d like to tell the system to point to a shared Pictures, Music and Movies folder when you click on one of those folders in a user folder. I’ve tried making an alias, but i am presented with an error that says OSX needs the (say) Movies folder and it can’t be modified.
Any suggestions?
matt, Dec 17 07 at 12:45 pmHey Tismey, I thought for a second that might be the solver. But no deal
I’ll keep investigating. I’ll post the solution if I find it.
matt
tismey, Dec 17 07 at 4:13 pm@tim – you’re talking about sharing the folder between users on the same machine, yes? I don’t think you’d use NFS for this, that’s more for sharing folders across a network with other machines. I feel sure that I read a thread about this on a while back – you could try searching there?
@matt – boo! In that case I’m a bit stumped. I guess you could try changing your -maproot to root, in case it’s a privileges issue. Can you share any other folders? Try sharing /Users/Movies or something, see if that works…
matt, Feb 06 08 at 10:18 amHey Tismey. Fixed it at last! (with help from the MCP Forum). For some reason it didn’t like my mask and subnet (even though they were correct). So my simplified exports file looked like this:
/matthewtv -ro -maproot=nobody
ie. no subnet or mask mentioned, and then it worked perfectly
on showmount I get:Exports list on localhost:
/matthewtv Everybody
tismey, Feb 06 08 at 12:04 pmThat’s great news! Interesting to know that you can get away without needing those options specified. Hopefully if anyone else encounters the same problem then this will be of help to them.
Juan, May 14 08 at 3:12 pmHello! This is the first time I’ve visited your blog and I’ve found it amazing. Thanks a lot! I’ve followed all your steps and everything is running well, except for one thing: I don’t know what IP adress enter in my TVIX. Could you help me to find out wich IP adress has the export list of localhost?
Right now, when I type “showmount -e” it says:
/tvixhd1 EveryoneThanks a lot for your help!
tismey, May 14 08 at 3:32 pmHi Juan,
Glad the blog has been of some help to you.
The IP address you need to put ito the TViX is the IP address of your Mac. You can get this from the Network pane in System Preferences. You’re probably best assigning a static IP to your Mac so you don’t need to keep changing this setting.
Juan, May 14 08 at 4:20 pmThanks! Now It’s working!
Henrik, May 22 08 at 7:08 pmThank you so so SO much Tismey! You have helped me use my tvix along with my mac with all the power it packs! I feel like writing this all in capital letters, but we all know what everybody thinks of that. Anyway, it’s a BIG thank you sent out from sweden to ya!
I really hope you can hook us up with some more great tips regarding the tvix and mac-user experience! How about editing themes and getting them on the tvix from the mac? Any help on that?
Throw me a mail!
Cheers and thanks again!
tismey, May 24 08 at 11:13 amHi Henrik
Glad you found the site useful!
I’ve not played about much with themes for teh TViX, I must admit. There is something I saw though. Try this: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=951350
Cheers
tismey
Clint, Sep 13 08 at 12:48 amThanks for putting this up. The nfs sharing on the tvix is so painful and picky. Your blog has helped a lot. Have you been able to mount a ftp share on your mac yet? I have to use Filezilla but would prefer to just have a mounted drive. I just can’t get the settings right. Any ideas you may have would be appreciated.
Thanks
Clint
tismey, Sep 16 08 at 12:21 amThe way FTP is implemented on the TViX is a bit knackered and it doesn’t properly respond to directory listing, which is apparently why only certain FTP clients work. Even if you could mount it as an FTP Volume, you wouldn’t be able to write to it without using something like MacFuse. It doesn’t look like they ever got round to addressing it in V1 of MacFusion, but I haven’t given v2 a go.
Ed, Jan 31 09 at 7:19 pmHi tismey,
I followed all your instruction to set up NFS exports successfully. Thank you so much!!
Now my Tvix can see all the shared folders in my MacPro. However, I still couldn’t set up the external hard disk to my Tvix. The external hard disk is connected to the network via a USB hub to the Airport Extreme.
I tried all your steps but no success. When I type
sudo nfsd checkexports
the following comment displayed :
lost UUID for /Volumes/MyBook250, was 18AAD4A4-7D94-348C-BEDE-4DA6EEBF590D, keeping old UUID
lost UUID for /Volumes/MyBook250, was 18AAD4A4-7D94-348C-BEDE-4DA6EEBF590D, keeping old UUIDI don’t know why there are two entries of the same comment. Can you please help?
Cheers
tismey, Feb 02 09 at 12:42 pmHi Ed,
Glad the post was of some help! Unfortunately you won’t be able to use NFS streaming to connect to an external drive connected to an Airport Extreme, because the Airport Extreme doesn’t use NFS.If you want to stream from a disk connected to your airport Extreme, then you’ll have to use SMB sharing, which is a bit slower than NFS but in my experience is fine if you have a wired connection from the TViX to the Airport. If you’re using wireless it probably won’t be fast enough for video but should be fine for music or photos.I’ve no idea about that duplicate log entry though, sorry!
Ed, Feb 02 09 at 3:24 pmHi tismey,
No wonder why I couldn’t set it up with NFS, thanks.Can you guide me through the setting up of SMB sharing with Tvix? I am not familiar with the mac ox platform.
Ed
tismey, Feb 02 09 at 7:24 pmHey Ed
Check out this post I wrote on setting up Airport Disk with the TViX. I also posted some screenshots in the comments. Hopefully that should give you all the information you need.
Ed, Feb 04 09 at 10:11 pmHi tismey,
I followed your instruction but still couldn’t set it up. I thought I might just connect the external hard disk directly to my macpro and see if I can share a folder via the system preferences.When I connected it back to the airport extreme, I can now see the files under the user account tvixhd1. However, I cannot see this folder. It seems like it is a hidden file user the folder Users. That means I can’t put files in that folder tvixhd1 unless I plug the external harddisk to my macpro.
I don’t know what I have done. Can you please help me ?
tismey, Feb 05 09 at 12:16 amHi Ed
You actually shouldn’t be able to see that folder when you connect via the airport extreme, because that folder is the tvixhd1 ‘Home’ directory.If I’ve understood you correctly, with the HD connected up to the AE, you can see the files in the tvixhd1 folder. So can you not just drag files into that window to copy them to the Hard Drive, or am I misunderstanding you? Could you maybe post a screenshot of what you’re seeing?
Ed, Feb 07 09 at 5:29 pmHi tismey,
The situation is : My tvix can see the file in the home directory of tvixhd1. But my MacPro cannot see the folder and that means I can’t copy any file to that folder. My MacPro can only see the tvixhd1 home directory when the HD is plugged directly to the laptop. Otherwise the folder cannot be seen when the HD is connected to the AE.
What should I do let my MacPro to gain access to the home directory to the tvixhd1 while the HD is connected to the AE?
tismey, Feb 08 09 at 10:31 pmAh, gotcha. So when you click on the ‘Connect As’ button and it prompts you for a username and password, can you log in as tvixhd1/tvixhd1? That should put you in that directory.
Ed, Feb 11 09 at 8:57 pmI tried that but I still couldn’t see those files in the root directory except when I connect the HD directly to the MacPro. Any idea? Very frustrated….
tismey, Feb 11 09 at 11:58 pmHmm… this is really confusing, because mine has always just worked. When you’re connected to the airport disk, how does it say you’re connected? As you can see, mine says ‘connected as tvixhd1′ and there is a tvixhd1 folder.
bandara1, Sep 02 09 at 12:03 pmI mounted SNOW LEOPARD and…
the trick doesn’t work anymore.
There is no more /etc/exportsI read something about “Disk Utility” and a menu item named “NFS Mount…” but I’m not able to get it working.
tismey… can you help me?
tismey, Sep 02 09 at 4:48 pmHi
I’m really sorry, but I’m afraid I really can’t help! I haven’t upgraded to Snow Leopard yet, and I no longer have a TVix to test it with.I found the following reference to NFS shares under 10.6
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090830073912179
but this appears to concern mounting an NFS share on the Mac, as opposed to the other way around. NFS Manager (http://www.bresink.de/osx/NFSManager.html) has been updated to add preliminary Snow Leopard support, so that might be a good place to start.Really sorry I can’t be more help – good luck!
Henrik, Sep 05 09 at 9:54 pmI just followed your guide again after a clean install of Snow Leopard. It DOES still work! I even got it right on the first go. Flawless! I’m using an imac with wired LAN through a router, also connected by wire to my tvix 4100. Maybe the glitch is in the Airport/WLAN? Also, check your network mask! =)
Thanks again for this great guide! Have to copy down these commands in case your site should some day go down.
Henrik, Sep 06 09 at 10:09 amHi!
I used the guide yesterday under Snow Leopard and it DOES still work flawlessly with my TViX 4100. Got up and running straight away. Check your input bandara1!
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