Mount NFS share in /Volumes as a drive
I have spent quite a bit of time figuring out automounts of NFS shares in OS X...
Somewhere along the line, Apple decided allowing mounts directly into /Volumes should not be possible:
/etc/auto_master (see last line):
#
# Automounter master map
#
+auto_master # Use directory service
/net -hosts -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home auto_home -nobrowse,hidefromfinder
/Network/Servers -fstab
/- -static
/- auto_nfs -nobrowse,nosuid
/etc/auto_nfs (this is all one line):
/Volumes/my_mount -fstype=nfs,noowners,nolockd,noresvport,hard,bg,intr,rw,tcp,nfc nfs://192.168.1.1:/exports/my_share
This will not work (anymore!) though it "should".
$ sudo automount -cv
...
automount: /Volumes/my_mount: mountpoint unavailable
What's the solution?
It's so easy my jaw dropped when I figured it out. Basically, we trick OS X into thinking we're mounting * somewhere else. *
When you're talking about paths in just about any environment, the root folder is the highest path you can reach, whether it's C:\
(windows) or /
(*nix)
When you're at this path, attempting to reach the parent path, via ..
will keep you at the root path.
For example: /../../../../
is still just /
By now, a few of you have already figured it out.
TL;DR / Solution:
Change your /etc/auto_nfs
config from (this is all one line):
/Volumes/my_mount -fstype=nfs,noowners,nolockd,noresvport,hard,bg,intr,rw,tcp,nfc nfs://192.168.1.1:/exports/my_share
To (this is all one line):
/../Volumes/my_mount -fstype=nfs,noowners,nolockd,noresvport,hard,bg,intr,rw,tcp,nfc nfs://192.168.1.1:/exports/my_share
And re-run the automounter:
$ sudo automount -cv
...
automount: /Volumes/my_mount: mounted
..... there you go! Technically /../Volumes
is still /Volumes
, but the automounter does not see things that way ;)
This configuration persists the mount across restarts, and creates the mountpoint automatically.