networking NFS

Configuring a NFS Share

How to create a general purpose Network File System share.

  2 minute read

Creating a Network File System (NFS) share on TrueNAS gives the benefit of making lots of data easily available for anyone with share access. Depending how the share is setup, users accessing the share can be restricted to read or write privileges.

To get started, make sure a dataset has been created. This dataset serves as share data storage. If a dataset already exists, proceed to turning the NFS service on.

NFS Service

To turn the NFS service on, go to Services and click the slider for NFS. If you wish to turn the service on automatically when the TrueNAS system is turned on, check the Start Automatically box.

NOTE: The NFS share will not work if the service is not turned on.

The NFS service settings can be configured by clicking . Don’t forget to click SAVE when changing the settings. Unless a specific setting is needed, it is recommended to use the default settings for the NFS service.

NFS Share

Now it is time to create the NFS share. Go to Sharing > Unix Shares (NFS) and click ADD. Use the file browser to select the dataset to be shared. An optional Description can be set to help identify the share. At the time of creation, the NFS share is enabled by default. If you wish to create the share but not immediately enable it, unset the Enable checkbox. Clicking SUBMIT creates the share.

Opening the ADVANCED OPTIONS allows tuning the share access permissions and defining authorized networks.

Existing NFS shares can be edited by going to Sharing > Unix Shares (NFS) and clicking .

Connecting to the NFS Share

Although you can connect to an NFS share with various operating systems, it is recommended to use a Linux/Unix operating system. First, download the nfs-common kernel module. This can be done using the package manager of the installed distribution. For example, on Ubuntu/Debian, enter sudo apt-get install nfs-common in the terminal. After installing the module, connect to an NFS share by entering sudo mount -t nfs IPaddressOfTrueNASsystem:path/to/nfsShare localMountPoint.

In the above example, IPaddressOfTrueNASsystem is the IP address of the remote TrueNAS system that contains the NFS share, path/to/nfsShare is the path to the NFS share on the TrueNAS system, and localMountPoint is a local directory on the host system configured for the mounted NFS share. For example, sudo mount -t nfs 10.239.15.110:/mnt/pool1/photoDataset /mnt will mount the NFS share photoDataset to the local directory /mnt. By default, anyone that connects to the NFS share only has the read permission.


Last modified August 31, 2020: Update nfs-share.md (f5150581)