Mount an NFS Share on a Mac using the Terminal
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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.