Why am I getting “permission denied” when connecting to my NFS share?

Question

On Ubuntu version 17.04, my NFS shares are defined as follows:

Configuration

In /etc/exports:

/bottle/media 192.168.0.0/16(ro,all_squash,no_subtree_check,anonuid=65534,anongid=65534) 10.3.0.0/16(rw,all_squash,sync,no_subtree_check,anonuid=65534,anongid=65534)

UNIX file permissions for the shared volume:

$ ls -al /bottle
total 5
drwxr-xr-x  3 root   root       3 Sep  3 11:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 28 root   root    4096 Sep  3 00:37 ..
drwxrwxr-x  2 nobody nogroup    2 Sep  3 11:45 media

Verification

Ran sudo exportfs:

/bottle/media   192.168.0.0/16
/bottle/media   10.3.0.0/24

Checked the NFS server daemon:

$ sudo systemctl status nfs-server
● nfs-server.service - NFS server and services
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nfs-server.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (exited) since Sun 2017-09-03 12:09:47 BST; 16min ago
  Process: 23350 ExecStopPost=/usr/sbin/exportfs -f (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 23344 ExecStopPost=/usr/sbin/exportfs -au (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 23337 ExecStop=/usr/sbin/rpc.nfsd 0 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 23380 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/rpc.nfsd $RPCNFSDARGS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 23374 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/exportfs -r (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 23380 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Tasks: 0 (limit: 4915)
   Memory: 0B
      CPU: 0
   CGroup: /system.slice/nfs-server.service

Sep 03 12:09:47 monolith systemd[1]: Starting NFS server and services...
Sep 03 12:09:47 monolith systemd[1]: Started NFS server and services.

Verified that the UID/GID settings correspond to nobody and nogroup, respectively:

$ id -u nobody
65534

$ getent group nogroup
nogroup:x:65534:

Symptoms

The NFS server host is located at 10.3.0.100. The client (OSX Sierra v10.12.6) is at 10.3.0.102.

I attempted a connection using finder's "Connect to Server" dialogue (cmd + k), into which I entered nfs://10.3.0.100.

Doing so yields the following error: You do not have permission to access this server.

Is this a configuration problem? What have I done wrong?

Answer 1

In order to connect to the NFS share with MacOS, the share must be defined with the insecure flag. All that means is its allowing a connection from a non standard port (which macOS uses). So your export line would look like this.

10.3.0.0/16 (rw,all_squash,sync,no_subtree_check,anonuid=65534,anongid=65534,insecure)

Also, when connecting from mac (especially on nfsv3) you have to connect to a specific exported folder rather than the root folder or just the IP.

nfs://10.3.0.100/bottle/media

Should do the trick!