5.5. Setting up an NFS Client

Table 5.4. Mount options

softWhen a major timeout happens send the calling program an I/O error, rather than retry indefinitely.
hardWhen a major timeout happens, report server not responding and continues to reconnect indefinitely unless the intr option is also specified
bgIf the first mount fails retry subsequent mounts in the background (default is fg)
intrAllows NFS requests to be interrupted
nolockSometimes needed with older NFS servers
rsize=n wsize=nSet communication block sizes for read and write. The default is 1024 bytes. On a clear network the speed may be improved by setting n to 8192
ERRORSPossible cause
mount: RPC: Program not registeredThe remote NFS server is not running
mount: IP:share failed, reason given by server: Permission deniedWrong directory

The showmount tool can view NFS shares available on a remote host. The main options are:

showmount -a serverlists client IP and directory mounted
showmount -e serverlists the content of /etc/exports from the server
showmount -d server lists only the exported directories on the server