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nfs man page

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NFS(5)                     Linux Programmer's Manual                    NFS(5)




NAME

       nfs - nfs fstab format and options


SYNOPSIS

       /etc/fstab


DESCRIPTION

       The  fstab  file  contains information about which filesystems to mount
       where and with what options.  For NFS mounts, it  contains  the  server
       name  and  exported server directory to mount from, the local directory
       that is the mount point, and the NFS specific options that control  the
       way the filesystem is mounted.

       Here is an example from an /etc/fstab file from an NFS mount.

       server:/usr/local/pub    /pub   nfs    rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr

   Options
       rsize=n        The  number of bytes NFS uses when reading files from an
                      NFS server.  The default value is dependent on the  ker-
                      nel,  currently  1024  bytes.   (However,  throughput is
                      improved greatly by asking for rsize=8192.)

       wsize=n        The number of bytes NFS uses when writing  files  to  an
                      NFS  server.  The default value is dependent on the ker-
                      nel, currently  1024  bytes.   (However,  throughput  is
                      improved greatly by asking for wsize=8192.)

       timeo=n        The value in tenths of a second before sending the first
                      retransmission after an RPC timeout.  The default  value
                      is  7  tenths of a second.  After the first timeout, the
                      timeout is doubled after each successive timeout until a
                      maximum  timeout  of 60 seconds is reached or the enough
                      retransmissions have occured to cause a  major  timeout.
                      Then,  if the filesystem is hard mounted, each new time-
                      out cascade restarts at twice the initial value  of  the
                      previous cascade, again doubling at each retransmission.
                      The maximum timeout is always 60 seconds.  Better  over-
                      all  performance may be achieved by increasing the time-
                      out when mounting on a busy network, to a  slow  server,
                      or through several routers or gateways.

       retrans=n      The  number  of  minor timeouts and retransmissions that
                      must occur before a major timeout occurs.   The  default
                      is  3  timeouts.   When a major timeout occurs, the file
                      operation is either aborted or a "server not responding"
                      message is printed on the console.

       acregmin=n     The minimum time in seconds that attributes of a regular
                      file should be cached before requesting  fresh  informa-
                      tion from a server.  The default is 3 seconds.

       acregmax=n     The maximum time in seconds that attributes of a regular
                      file can be cached before requesting  fresh  information
                      from a server.  The default is 60 seconds.

       acdirmin=n     The  minimum time in seconds that attributes of a direc-
                      tory should be cached before requesting  fresh  informa-
                      tion from a server.  The default is 30 seconds.

       acdirmax=n     The  maximum time in seconds that attributes of a direc-
                      tory can be cached before requesting  fresh  information
                      from a server.  The default is 60 seconds.

       actimeo=n      Using  actimeo sets all of acregmin, acregmax, acdirmin,
                      and acdirmax to the same value.   There  is  no  default
                      value.

       retry=n        The number of minutes to retry an NFS mount operation in
                      the foreground or  background  before  giving  up.   The
                      default  value  is  10000  minutes, which is roughly one
                      week.

       namlen=n       When an NFS server does not support version two  of  the
                      RPC  mount  protocol, this option can be used to specify
                      the maximum length of a filename that  is  supported  on
                      the  remote  filesystem.   This  is  used to support the
                      POSIX pathconf functions.  The default  is  255  charac-
                      ters.

       port=n         The  numeric  value  of  the  port to connect to the NFS
                      server on.  If the port number is 0 (the  default)  then
                      query  the  remote host's portmapper for the port number
                      to use.  If the remote host's NFS daemon is  not  regis-
                      tered  with its portmapper, the standard NFS port number
                      2049 is used instead.

       mountport=n    The numeric value of the mountd port.

       mounthost=name The name of the host running mountd .

       mountprog=n    Use an alternate RPC program number to contact the mount
                      daemon  on  the  remote host.  This option is useful for
                      hosts that can run multiple NFS  servers.   The  default
                      value  is  100005 which is the standard RPC mount daemon
                      program number.

       mountvers=n    Use an alternate RPC version number to contact the mount
                      daemon  on  the  remote host.  This option is useful for
                      hosts that can run multiple NFS  servers.   The  default
                      value depends on which kernel you are using.

       nfsprog=n      Use  an  alternate RPC program number to contact the NFS
                      daemon on the remote host.  This option  is  useful  for
                      hosts  that  can  run multiple NFS servers.  The default
                      value is 100003 which is the  standard  RPC  NFS  daemon
                      program number.

       nfsvers=n      Use  an  alternate RPC version number to contact the NFS
                      daemon on the remote host.  This option  is  useful  for
                      hosts  that  can  run multiple NFS servers.  The default
                      value is version 3.

       nolock         Disable NFS locking. Do not start lockd.  This has to be
                      used  with some old NFS servers that don't support lock-
                      ing.

       bg             If the first NFS mount  attempt  times  out,  retry  the
                      mount  in  the  background.   After a mount operation is
                      backgrounded, all subsequent  mounts  on  the  same  NFS
                      server  will  be backgrounded immediately, without first
                      attempting the mount.  A missing mount point is  treated
                      as a timeout, to allow for nested NFS mounts.

       fg             If  the  first  NFS  mount  attempt times out, retry the
                      mount in the foreground.  This is the complement of  the
                      bg option, and also the default behavior.

       soft           If an NFS file operation has a major timeout then report
                      an I/O error to the calling program.  The default is  to
                      continue retrying NFS file operations indefinitely.

       hard           If an NFS file operation has a major timeout then report
                      "server not responding"  on  the  console  and  continue
                      retrying indefinitely.  This is the default.

       intr           If  an  NFS file operation has a major timeout and it is
                      hard mounted, then allow signals to  interupt  the  file
                      operation  and  cause  it to return EINTR to the calling
                      program.  The default is to not allow file operations to
                      be interrupted.

       posix          Mount  the  NFS  filesystem using POSIX semantics.  This
                      allows an NFS filesystem to properly support  the  POSIX
                      pathconf  command  by  querying the mount server for the
                      maximum length of a filename.  To do  this,  the  remote
                      host must support version two of the RPC mount protocol.
                      Many NFS servers support only version one.

       nocto          Suppress the retrieval of new attributes when creating a
                      file.

       noac           Disable  all  forms of attribute caching entirely.  This
                      extracts a significant performance penalty but it allows
                      two different NFS clients to get reasonable results when
                      both clients are actively writing to a common export  on
                      the server.

       sec=mode       Set  the  security flavor for this mount to "mode".  The
                      default setting is sec=sys, which uses local  unix  uids
                      and  gids  to  authenticate  NFS  operations (AUTH_SYS).
                      Other currently supported settings are: sec=krb5,  which
                      uses  Kerberos V5 instead of local unix uids and gids to
                      authenticate users; sec=krb5i, which  uses  Kerberos  V5
                      for  user authentication and performs integrity checking
                      of NFS operations using secure checksums to prevent data
                      tampering;  and  sec=krb5p,  which  uses Kerberos V5 for
                      user authentication and integrity checking, and encrypts
                      NFS  traffic  to  prevent  traffic sniffing (this is the
                      most secure setting).  Note that there is a  performance
                      penalty when using integrity or privacy.

       tcp            Mount  the NFS filesystem using the TCP protocol instead
                      of the UDP protocol. This is the default, but in case it
                      fails  (many NFS servers only support UDP) it will fall-
                      back and try UDP.

                      Before using NFS over UDP, please refer to  the  section
                      WARNINGS below.

       udp            Mount the NFS filesystem using the UDP protocol.

                      Before  using  NFS over UDP, please refer to the section
                      WARNINGS below.

       noacl          Assume no extended access control mechanisms like  POSIX
                      ACLs  are  used on the NFS filesystem, and depend on the
                      file mode permission bits instead of  using  the  ACCESS
                      remote procedure call.  The default is to use the ACCESS
                      remote procedure call for making access decisions in NFS
                      version 3. (On NFS version 2 filesystems this option has
                      no effect.)  This option also deactivates the GETACL and
                      SETACL  remote  procedure calls which are otherwise used
                      to manipulate ACLs.

       All of the non-value options have corresponding  nooption  forms.   For
       example, nointr means don't allow file operations to be interrupted.


WARNINGS

       Using NFS over UDP on high-speed links such as Gigabit can cause silent
       data corruption.

       The problem can be triggered at high loads, and is caused  by  problems
       in  IP  fragment reassembly. NFS read and writes typically transmit UDP
       packets of 4 Kilobytes or more, which have to be broken up into several
       fragments  in  order  to  be  sent over the Ethernet link, which limits
       packets to 1500 bytes by default. This process happens at the  IP  net-
       work layer and is called fragmentation.

       In order to identify fragments that belong together, IP assigns a 16bit
       IP ID value to each packet;  fragments  generated  from  the  same  UDP
       packet  will  have  the  same  IP ID. The receiving system will collect
       these fragments and combine them to form the original UDP packet.  This
       process is called reassembly. The default timeout for packet reassembly
       is 30 seconds; if the network stack does not receive all fragments of a
       given  packet  within this interval, it assumes the missing fragment(s)
       got lost and discards those it already received.

       The problem this creates over high-speed links is that it  is  possible
       to  send more than 65536 packets within 30 seconds. In fact, with heavy
       NFS traffic one can observe that the IP IDs repeat after about  5  sec-
       onds.

       This  has  serious  effects  on  reassembly: if one fragment gets lost,
       another fragment from a different packet but with the same IP  ID  will
       arrive within the 30 second timeout, and the network stack will combine
       these fragments to form a new packet. Most of the time, network  layers
       above  IP  will detect this mismatched reassembly - in the case of UDP,
       the UDP checksum, which is a 16 bit checksum  over  the  entire  packet
       payload, will usually not match, and UDP will discard the bad packet.

       However,  the UDP checksum is 16 bit only, so there is a chance of 1 in
       65536 that it will match even if the packet payload is completely  ran-
       dom (which very often isn't the case). If that is the case, silent data
       corruption will occur.

       This potential should be taken seriously, at least on Gigabit Ethernet.
       Network  speeds  of  100Mbit/s  should  be considered less problematic,
       because with most traffic patterns IP ID wrap  around  will  take  much
       longer than 30 seconds.

       It  is  therefore strongly recommended to use NFS over TCP where possi
       ble, since TCP does not perform fragmentation.

       If you absolutely have to use NFS over UDP over Gigabit Ethernet,  some
       steps  can  be taken to mitigate the problem and reduce the probability
       of corruption:

       Jumbo frames:  Many Gigabit network cards are capable  of  transmitting
                      frames  bigger  than  the 1500 byte limit of traditional
                      Ethernet, typically 9000 bytes. Using  jumbo  frames  of
                      9000  bytes will allow you to run NFS over UDP at a page
                      size of 8K without fragmentation.  Of  course,  this  is
                      only  feasible  if  all  involved stations support jumbo
                      frames.

                      To enable a machine to send jumbo frames on  cards  that
                      support  it, it is sufficient to configure the interface
                      for a MTU value of 9000.

       Lower reassembly timeout:
                      By lowering this timeout below the time it takes the  IP
                      ID counter to wrap around, incorrect reassembly of frag-
                      ments can be prevented as well. To do so,  simply  write
                      the   new   timeout  value  (in  seconds)  to  the  file
                      /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ipfrag_time.

                      A value of 2 seconds will greatly reduce the probability
                      of  IPID  clashes  on a single Gigabit link, while still
                      allowing for a reasonable timeout when  receiving  frag-
                      mented traffic from distant peers.


FILES

       /etc/fstab


SEE ALSO

       fstab(5), mount(8), umount(8), exports(5)


AUTHOR

       "Rick Sladkey" <jrs@world.std.com>


BUGS

       The  posix,  and  nocto  options  are parsed by mount but currently are
       silently ignored.

       The umount command should notify the server when an NFS  filesystem  is
       unmounted.



Linux 0.99                     20 November 1993                         NFS(5)


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