MOUNTD(8) | System Manager's Manual | MOUNTD(8)

# NAME

`mountd` — service remote NFS mount requests

# SYNOPSIS

`mountd` | [`-dN`] [`-P` policy] [`-p` port] [exportsfile ...]

# DESCRIPTION

`mountd` is the server for NFS mount requests from other client machines.

`mountd` makes all filesystems listed in exports(5) available to NFS clients, and then listens for mount service requests at the port indicated in the NFS server specification; see Network File System Protocol Specification, RFC 1094, Appendix A, and NFS: Network File System Version 3 Protocol Specification, Appendix I.

Options and operands available for `mountd`:

`-d`
  Enable debugging mode. `mountd` will not detach from the controlling terminal and will print debugging messages to stderr.
`-N`
  Do not require privileged ports for mount or NFS RPC calls. This option is equivalent to specifying ‘`-noresvport -noresvmnt`’ on every export. See exports(5) for more information. Some operating systems (notably Mac OS X) require this option.
`-P` policy
  IPsec policy string, as described in ipsec_set_policy(3). Multiple IPsec policy strings may be specified by using a semicolon as a separator. If conflicting policy strings are found in a single line, the last string will take effect. If an invalid IPsec policy string is used `mountd` logs an error message and terminates itself.
`-p` port
  Force `mountd` to bind to the given port. If this option is not given, `mountd` may bind to every anonymous port (in the range 600–1023) which causes trouble when trying to use NFS through a firewall.
exportsfile
  The exportsfile argument specifies an alternative location for the exports(5) file. Multiple exports files can be defined.

When `mountd` is started, it loads the export host addresses and options into the kernel using the nfssvc(2) system call. After changing the exports file, a hangup signal should be sent to the `mountd` daemon to get it to reload the export information. After sending the `SIGHUP`

`kill -s HUP $(cat /var/run/mountd.pid)`

check the syslog output to see if `mountd` logged any parsing errors in the exports file.

After receiving `SIGTERM`, `mountd` sends a broadcast request to remove the mount list from all the clients. This can take a long time, since the broadcast request waits for each client to respond.

# FILES

/etc/exports
  the list of exported filesystems
/var/run/mountd.pid
  the pid of the currently running `mountd`
/var/db/mountdtab
  the list of remotely mounted filesystems

# SEE ALSO

nfsstat(1), nfssvc(2), ipsec_set_policy(3), exports(5), nfsd(8), rpcbind(8), showmount(8)

# HISTORY

The `mountd` utility first appeared in 4.4BSD.

February 16, 2021 | NetBSD 11.0