home | help
NFSV4(4)		     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 7530 and Network File Sys-
     tem  (NFS)  Version  4  Minor Version 1 Protocol RFC 5661.  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 per-
     form other open/lock state changing operations.  To provide for correct re-
     covery 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 pro-
     viding 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
	   - pNFS, where I/O operations are separated from Metadata operations

     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 sub-
     trees of the local file system, so that traversal of the tree  to	the  ex-
     ported  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.  How-
     ever, 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,  al-
     though not all clients are capable of doing this.

     NFSv4  uses  strings for users and groups instead of numbers.  On the wire,
     these strings can either have the numbers in the string or 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 component of the machine's  hostname.
     For use of this form of string on NFSv4, either client or server, this dae-
     mon must be running.

     The  form	where  the  numbers  are  in  the  strings  can only be used for
     AUTH_SYS.	To configure your systems this way, the nfsuserd(8) daemon  does
     not  need to be running on the server, but the following sysctls need to be
     set to 1 on the server.

	   vfs.nfs.enable_uidtostring
	   vfs.nfsd.enable_stringtouid

     On the client, the sysctl

	   vfs.nfs.enable_uidtostring

     must be set to 1 and the nfsuserd(8) daemon does not need to be running.

     If these strings are not configured correctly, ``ls -l'' will typically re-
     port a lot of ``nobody'' and ``nogroup'' ownerships.

     Although uid/gid numbers are no longer used in the  NFSv4	protocol  except
     optionally  in the above strings, they will still be in the RPC authentica-
     tion 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 set the
     variables in rc.conf(5) as follows:

	   nfs_server_enable="YES"
	   nfsv4_server_enable="YES"

     plus

	   nfsuserd_enable="YES"

     if the server is using the ``<user>@<domain>'' form of  user/group  strings
     or is using the ``-manage-gids'' option for nfsuserd(8).

     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 ob-
	     served.  This can only be enabled when the file systems  being  ex-
	     ported  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) com-
     mand line.  This will force use of the client that supports NFSv4 plus  set
     ``tcp'' and NFSv4.

     The nfsuserd(8) must be running if name<->uid/gid mapping is being used, 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 oc-
     cur if

	   nfsuserd_enable="YES"   <-- If name<->uid/gid mapping is being used.
	   nfscbd_enable="YES"

     are set in rc.conf(5).

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

     For NFSv4.0, by default, the callback address will be set to the IP address
     acquired  via  rtalloc() in the kernel and port# 7745.  To override the de-
     fault 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).

     For NFSv4.1, the callback path (called a backchannel)  uses  the  same  TCP
     connection  as  the  mount,  so  none  of the above applies and should work
     through gateways without any issues.

     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  recom-
     mended, 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

SEE ALSO
     stablerestart(5), mountd(8), nfscbd(8),  nfsd(8),	nfsdumpstate(8),  nfsre-
     voke(8), nfsuserd(8)

BUGS
     At this time, there is no recall of delegations for local file system oper-
     ations.   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 11.2			  July 19, 2017 			NFSV4(4)

home | help