In this case we are mounting a share on a Mac client from a Linux NFS server.

The Linux NFS server is sharing the directory at /srv/nfs via both the NFS4 (nfsv4) and NFS3 (nfsv3) protocols.

The NFS share is mounted at /mnt/nfs on the Mac client.

sudo mount -t nfs 192.168.1.2:/srv/nfs /mnt/nfs

Persistent Mount

If you want to make the NFS mount persistent (automatically mount at boot) on the Mac client, you can use the special vifs command and add that mount point. You must use vifs for this, do not edit /etc/fstab directly.

192.168.1.2:/srv/nfs    /mnt/nfs    nfs    rw

In my testing, this mount entry is resilient, and will not cause issues if the NFS server is unreachable.

Troubleshooting

The showmount command is a great tool for debugging NFS issues. showmount can be used to list exports on an NFS server. This command should be run from the Mac client.

showmount -e 192.168.1.2

From the Mac client we can see that the Linux NFS server is serving the directory /srv/nfs and that the NFS share is accessible to * (everyone).

Export list on 192.168.1.2:
/srv/nfs    *

You can read up on Apple’s fstab and vifs implementations.

If you get the error Operation not permitted on the Mac client, you may want to try adding -o resvport to your mount command on the Mac client.

If you get the error Permission denied on the Mac client, you may want to try adding the insecure option to the /etc/exports configuration on the Linux NFS server.