Ubuntu Manpage: NFSv4 — NFS Version 4 Protocol

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NAME

     NFSv4 — NFS Version 4 Protocol

DESCRIPTION

The NFS client and server provides support for the NFSv4 specification; see Network File
System (NFS) Version 4 Protocol RFC 3530. The protocol is somewhat similar to NFS Version
3, but differs in significant ways. It uses a single compound RPC that concatenates
operations to-gether. Each of these operations are similar to the RPCs of NFS Version 3.
The operations in the compound are performed in order, until one of them fails (returns an
error) and then the RPC terminates at that point.

It has integrated locking support, which implies that the server is no longer stateless. As
such, the NFSv4 server remains in recovery mode for a grace period (always greater than the
lease duration the server uses) after a reboot. During this grace period, clients may
recover state but not perform other open/lock state changing operations. To provide for
correct recovery semantics, a small file described by stablerestart(5) is used by the server
during the recovery phase. If this file is missing or empty, there is a backup copy
maintained by nfsd(8) that will be used. If either file is missing, they will be created by
the nfsd(8). If both the file and the backup copy are empty, it will result in the server
starting without providing a grace period for recovery. Note that recovery only occurs when
the server machine is rebooted, not when the nfsd(8) are just restarted.

It provides several optional features not present in NFS Version 3:

- NFS Version 4 ACLs
- Referrals, which redirect subtrees to other servers
(not yet implemented)
- Delegations, which allow a client to operate on a file locally

The NFSv4 protocol does not use a separate mount protocol and assumes that the server
provides a single file system tree structure, rooted at the point in the local file system
tree specified by one or more

V4: <rootdir> [-sec=secflavors] [host(s) or net]

line(s) in the exports(5) file. (See exports(5) for details.) The nfsd(8) allows a limited
subset of operations to be performed on non-exported subtrees of the local file system, so
that traversal of the tree to the exported subtrees is possible. As such, the ``<rootdir>''
can be in a non-exported file system. The exception is ZFS, which checks exports and, as
such, all ZFS file systems below the ``<rootdir>'' must be exported. However, the entire
tree that is rooted at that point must be in local file systems that are of types that can
be NFS exported. Since the NFSv4 file system is rooted at ``<rootdir>'', setting this to
anything other than ``/'' will result in clients being required to use different mount paths
for NFSv4 than for NFS Version 2 or 3. Unlike NFS Version 2 and 3, Version 4 allows a
client mount to span across multiple server file systems, although not all clients are
capable of doing this.

NFSv4 uses names for users and groups instead of numbers. On the wire, they take the form:

where ``<dns.domain>'' is not the same as the DNS domain used for host name lookups, but is
usually set to the same string. Most systems set this ``<dns.domain>'' to the domain name
part of the machine's hostname(1) by default. However, this can normally be overridden by a
command line option or configuration file for the daemon used to do the name<->number
mapping. Under FreeBSD, the mapping daemon is called nfsuserd(8) and has a command line
option that overrides the domain component of the machine's hostname. For use of NFSv4,
either client or server, this daemon must be running. If this ``<dns.domain>'' is not set
correctly or the daemon is not running, ``ls -l'' will typically report a lot of ``nobody''
and ``nogroup'' ownerships.

Although uid/gid numbers are no longer used in the NFSv4 protocol, they will still be in the
RPC authentication fields when using AUTH_SYS (sec=sys), which is the default. As such, in
this case both the user/group name and number spaces must be consistent between the client
and server.

However, if you run NFSv4 with RPCSEC_GSS (sec=krb5, krb5i, krb5p), only names and KerberosV
tickets will go on the wire.

SERVER SETUP

To set up the NFS server that supports NFSv4, you will need to either set the variables in
rc.conf(5) as follows:

nfs_server_enable="YES"
nfsv4_server_enable="YES"
nfsuserd_enable="YES"

or start mountd(8) and nfsd(8) without the ``-o'' option, which would force use of the old
server. The nfsuserd(8) daemon must also be running.

You will also need to add at least one ``V4:'' line to the exports(5) file for NFSv4 to
work.

If the file systems you are exporting are only being accessed via NFSv4 there are a couple
of sysctl(8) variables that you can change, which might improve performance.

vfs.nfsd.issue_delegations
when set non-zero, allows the server to issue Open Delegations to clients. These
delegations permit the client to manipulate the file locally on the client.
Unfortunately, at this time, client use of delegations is limited, so performance
gains may not be observed. This can only be enabled when the file systems being
exported to NFSv4 clients are not being accessed locally on the server and, if being
accessed via NFS Version 2 or 3 clients, these clients cannot be using the NLM.

vfs.nfsd.enable_locallocks
can be set to 0 to disable acquisition of local byte range locks. Disabling local
locking can only be done if neither local accesses to the exported file systems nor
the NLM is operating on them.

Note that Samba server access would be considered ``local access'' for the above discussion.

To build a kernel with the NFS server that supports NFSv4 linked into it, the

options NFSD

must be specified in the kernel's config(5) file.

CLIENT MOUNTS

     To do an NFSv4 mount, specify the ``nfsv4'' option on the mount_nfs(8) command line.  This
     will force use of the client that supports NFSv4 plus set ``tcp'' and NFSv4.

     The nfsuserd(8) must be running, as above.  Also, since an NFSv4 mount uses the host uuid to
     identify the client uniquely to the server, you cannot safely do an NFSv4 mount when

           hostid_enable="NO"

     is set in rc.conf(5).

     If the NFSv4 server that is being mounted on supports delegations, you can start the
     nfscbd(8) daemon to handle client side callbacks.  This will occur if

           nfsuserd_enable="YES"
           nfscbd_enable="YES"

     are set in rc.conf(5).

     Without a functioning callback path, a server will never issue Delegations to a client.

     By default, the callback address will be set to the IP address acquired via rtalloc() in the
     kernel and port# 7745.  To override the default port#, a command line option for nfscbd(8)
     can be used.

     To get callbacks to work when behind a NAT gateway, a port for the callback service will
     need to be set up on the NAT gateway and then the address of the NAT gateway (host IP plus
     port#) will need to be set by assigning the sysctl(8) variable vfs.nfs.callback_addr to a
     string of the form:

     N.N.N.N.N.N

     where the first 4 Ns are the host IP address and the last two are the port# in network byte
     order (all decimal #s in the range 0-255).

     To build a kernel with the client that supports NFSv4 linked into it, the option

           options NFSCL

     must be specified in the kernel's config(5) file.

     Options can be specified for the nfsuserd(8) and nfscbd(8) daemons at boot time via the
     ``nfsuserd_flags'' and ``nfscbd_flags'' rc.conf(5) variables.

     NFSv4 mount(s) against exported volume(s) on the same host are not recommended, since this
     can result in a hung NFS server.  It occurs when an nfsd thread tries to do an NFSv4
     VOP_RECLAIM()/Close RPC as part of acquiring a new vnode.  If all other nfsd threads are
     blocked waiting for lock(s) held by this nfsd thread, then there isn't an nfsd thread to
     service the Close RPC.

FILES

     /var/db/nfs-stablerestart      NFS V4 stable restart file
     /var/db/nfs-stablerestart.bak  backup copy of the file

BUGS