GNU Hurd/ hurd/ translator/ nfs

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Translator acting as a NFS client.

Only NFSv2/v3 is currently supported.

There are a few unmerged changes on a former GSoC project's topic-branch.

A setup example (2025-12-21), Linux server

This example has the NFS server on a Linux system and the NFS client on a GNU hurd-amd64 system. Specifically, the Linux system is a Devuan 5 (daedalus), which thus corresponds to Debian 12 (bookworm) with the nfs-kernel-server package version 1:2.6.2-4+deb12u1; the hurd-amd64 is from the debian port snapshot dated 2025-08-07, and running in a QEMU VM on the server host.

It all ran OOTB with only two specific configuration changes:

  1. The configuration file /etc/default/nfs-kernel-server is changed by adding "-u" for the NFSD startup variable RPCNFSDCOUNT, so as to enable UDP for the NFS server (it is disabled by default). The configuration line will thus read:

    RPCNFSDCOUNT="-u 8"

    The nfs-kernel-server needs to be restarted following the configuration change.

    Also, the export configuration file, /etc/exports, needs to be set up to nominate path(s) to export and which clients are allowed to use them. (See "man exports" on the Linux system for its details)

  2. The /hurd/nfs translator is started with argument "--nfs-program=3" so as to make it use NFSv3 (the default is NFSv2). The startup command used thus has the following form:

    settrans $LOCAL /hurd/nfs -s --nfs-program=3 $REMOTE $SERVER

    where $LOCAL is a local existing pathname, e.g. /nfs, $REMOTE is the exported path on the server, e.g. /home/rrq/shared, and $SERVER is the server hostname or IP address, e.g. 172.18.46.1.

    Note that the "-s" argument is an optional author's choice, to let the nfs translator exit if it fails to connect on the first 3 attempts. Its default, without "-s", is to keep trying.

See Also