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NFSV4(4)	       FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual		      NFSV4(4)

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.  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:

	   <user>@<dns.domain>

     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 com-
     ponent 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 run-
     ning.

     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.	 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 Delega-
     tions 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	call-
     back 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.

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

SEE ALSO
     stablerestart(5), mountd(8), nfscbd(8), nfsd(8), nfsdumpstate(8),
     nfsrevoke(8), nfsuserd(8),

BUGS
     At	this time, there is no recall of delegations for local file system
     operations.  As such, delegations should only be enabled for file systems
     that are being used solely	as NFS export volumes and are not being
     accessed via local	system calls nor services such as Samba.

FreeBSD	11.1			 May 15, 2011			  FreeBSD 11.1

NAME | DESCRIPTION | SERVER SETUP | CLIENT MOUNTS | FILES | SEE ALSO | BUGS

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