Trouble mounting a local nfs server

Miusaky · August 17, 2022, 11:43am

I’m attempting to mount a local nfs server and I’m not sure what’s preventing it. Rebuilding the system doesn’t spit out an error, but the mount directory remains empty.

I have added an entry according to the wiki:

  fileSystems."/mnt/nfs" = {
    device = "192.168.1.245:/DATA";
    fsType = "nfs";
  };

I have enabled the nfs service (is this needed if I don’t intend to run a server?):

  services = {
    rpcbind.enable = true;
    nfs.server.enable = true;
  };

I have also installed nfs-utils (is this needed?) and disabled the firewall.

If I attempt to do a manual mount, it doesn’t seem to be able to find it:

mount -t nfs 192.168.1.245:/DATA /mnt/nfs
mount.nfs: No such device

The path is correct, the server is online, and I can view it from a different machine.

Systemctl shows the service as exited:

systemctl list-units --type=service | grep nfs
  nfs-idmapd.service                                                                        loaded active running NFSv4 ID-name mapping service
  nfs-mountd.service                                                                        loaded active running NFS Mount Daemon
  nfs-server.service                                                                        loaded active exited  NFS server and services
  nfsdcld.service                                                                           loaded active running NFSv4 Client Tracking Daemon

Any ideas on how to resolve this?

_Andrew · August 17, 2022, 4:58pm

Not sure what the problem is here but I can offer that the services and utilities shouldn’t be necessary. I’ve been able to mount TrueNAS NFS shares with just the fileSystems declaration, and rpcbind.service seems to have been started automatically.

Nebucatnetzer · August 17, 2022, 5:30pm

I had some troubles as well with my QNAP NAS.
It turned out that it didn’t support the newest NFS version.

For me this config is working on my notebook (hence the automount):

github.com

Nebucatnetzer/nixos/blob/a65c6362f6a26288c2b59328d7f14a9c0bd407f2/modules/services/data-share/default.nix

{ config, lib, ... }:
let
  cfg = config.services.az-data-share;
in
{
  options = {
    services.az-data-share.enable = lib.mkEnableOption "Enable the server data FNS share";
  };
  config = lib.mkIf cfg.enable {
    fileSystems."/mnt/data" = {
      device = "10.7.89.108:server_data";
      fsType = "nfs";
      options = [
        "x-systemd.automount"
        "noauto"
        "x-systemd.idle-timeout=300"
        "noatime"
        "nfsvers=4.0"
      ];
    };

This file has been truncated. show original

Or this config for one of my servers:

github.com

Nebucatnetzer/nixos/blob/a65c6362f6a26288c2b59328d7f14a9c0bd407f2/modules/services/restic-server/default.nix#L35


      
          
          age.secrets.resticKey = {
            file = "${inputs.self}/scrts/restic.key.age";
            mode = "440";
            owner = "restic";
            group = "restic";
          };
          
          environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.restic ];
          
          fileSystems."${cfg.repository}" = {
            device = "10.7.89.108:restic-server";
            fsType = "nfs";
            options = [
              "noatime"
              "hard"
              "nfsvers=4.0"
            ];
          };
          services.restic.server = {
            enable = true;

Miusaky · August 19, 2022, 8:54am

Turns out I was missing the nfs kernel module. Loaded it and the server now mounts.

Nebucatnetzer · August 19, 2022, 9:09am

Oh how did that happen?

nixinator · August 19, 2022, 9:17am

i wonder if nixos service modules can check for the existence or kernel modules in the nixos , in theory it just has to evaluate config. and see if those modules are enabled in the kernel, and warn if they are not…

ratsclub · February 12, 2023, 9:45pm

I’ve got it to work with the following options.

# nfs
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ nfs-utils ];
boot.initrd = {
  supportedFilesystems = [ "nfs" ];
  kernelModules = [ "nfs" ];
};
fileSystems."/mnt/share" = {
  device = "local-machine:/srv/share";
  fsType = "nfs";
};

marius · November 30, 2024, 9:52am

For anyone finding this later, trying to do a simply mount from the command line but getting an error like this:

bad option; for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might need a /sbin/mount.<type> helper program.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

All I needed was this in my configuration.nix was this:

  boot.supportedFilesystems = [ "nfs" ];