QNAP NAS devices and Windows 7 NFS Client

Posted on December 30, 2009 by PiroNet

I will be focussing in this post on how to access a  QNAP TS-639 Pro Turbo NAS running NFS server from a Windows 7 machine running Windows NFS Client.

Enable NFS Server on the TS-639 NAS

  • Browse your QNAP Administration Web Page, left panel click on Network Services, select NFS Service
  • On the right panel, tick the box Enable NFS Service and click Apply
  • Click on “Click here to set the NFS access right of the network share.” and you will be directed to the Share Folders area.
  • Create a new share, give it a name, for instance ‘nfs’, leave the default settings and click Finish
  • Now in the Share Folders area, click on NFS icon for the newly created ‘nfs’ share and set the access right to ‘no limit’ and click apply.

Enable NFS Client on Windows 7

To enable the Windows NFS Client on a Windows 7 machine follow the following step:

  • Go to Control Panel, Programs and Features, click on Turn Windows features on or off, tick the box Services for NFS, click OK

Connect using Windows 7 NFS Client

You are ready to connect to your  QNAP TS-639 Pro Turbo NAS using NFS. Open a dos prompt on your Windows 7 machine.
First lets check if we can see what are the shares exported on the NFS server:

  • showmount -e

showmount -e qnapnas02
Exports list on qnapnas02:
/Download
/Multimedia
/Network Recycle Bin 1
/Public
/Recordings
/Usb
/Web
/nfs <- As you can see, the share is available for NFS Clients.

Now let’s mount the share:

  • mount -u: <username> -p: <password> qnapnas02:/nfs w:

Something will come up like this: W: is now successfully connected to QNAPNAS02:/nfs

Let’s check that with the mount command:

  • mount

Local    Remote                                 Properties
———————————————————————————-
W:       \\QNAPNAS02\nfs                         UID=0, GID=0
                                                                 rsize=32768, wsize=32768
                                                                 mount=soft, timeout=1.6
                                                                 retry=1, locking=yes
                                                                 fileaccess=755, lang=ANSI
                                                                 casesensitive=no
                                                                 sec=sys

Troubleshooting

  • If you get this error message: Network Error – 53  Type ‘NET HELPMSG 53’ for more information. make sure that you can successfully ping the different host names, that is the NFS server and the NFS client from each other!
    • On the NFS server, add the NFS clients to /etc/hosts
    • And on the NFS clients, add the NFS server to windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts file
  • Also pay attention to the command, it is not qnapnas02://nfs as stated in some Microsoft web pages but qnapnas02:/nfs with a single forward slash!

About PiroNet

Didier Pironet is an independent blogger and freelancer with +15 years of IT industry experience. Didier is also a former VMware inc. employee where he specialised in Datacenter and Cloud Infrastructure products as well as Infrastructure, Operations and IT Business Management products. Didier is passionate about technologies and he is found to be a creative and a visionary thinker, expressing with passion and excitement, hopefully inspiring and enrolling people to innovation and change.
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5 Responses to QNAP NAS devices and Windows 7 NFS Client

  1. Moogle Stiltzkin says:
    July 4, 2010 at 16:23

    Hi i tried to follow your guide but it doesn’t seem to work.

    I’m using windows 7 64 bit on my desktop, and i have a QNAP TS-509 Pro.

    So i enabled the win 7 nfs service as mentioned.

    at this part

    “showmount -e”

    I had to use “showmount -e ”

    I did not see any /nfs folder although nfs is enabled on my QNAP TS-509 Pro. But since nfs is enabled and i did the nfs share for my Anime folder, i think it should work still ?

    This command didn’t work by the way

    “mount -u: -p: 192.168.0.195:/nfs w:”

    So i tried this one which also didn’t work

    “mount -u: -p: 192.168.0.195:/Anime w:”

    Any ideas what i did wrong ??

    Reply
    • deinoscloud says:
      July 4, 2010 at 23:27

      Hi and thanks for commenting.

      First make sure you can ping each other, the QNAP device and the client PC with IP address and also NetBIOS names.

      Then make sure that the Client for NFS service is up and running on your client machine.

      Then enable NFS server on your QNAP storage.

      Then create a new share or use an existing one. It is important that in NFS Access Right, you authorize NFS access to that share.

      Then on your client type in showmount -e to see the exported list in the QNAP device.

      Finally the mount command to mount the NFS share.

      Reply
  2. Moogle Stiltzkin says:
    July 5, 2010 at 15:17

    Yo Deinos. I figured it out.

    This worked for me

    Step 1: Enable NFS service on win7

    Step 2: My homegroup for win7 should be my pc name. So i went to my QNAP web panel and changed the workgroup to the same as my desktop workgroup.

    Step 3: In my QNAP, i enable NFS Service.

    Next, in Network Share Management, i set the Access right (NFS Access Control) for each share to “No limit”.

    Step 4: Go to CMD prompt and do the following.

    C:\> NET USE

    You should see a list of all the current shares with their drive letters and showing “Microsoft Network”.

    C:\> NET USE * /DELETE

    This deletes (unmounts/disconnects) ALL of the current shares.

    showmount -e

    I use this to find out my shared folders.

    MOUNT -u: -p: \\\Storage\Videos\Anime X:

    Now, use the MOUNT command to reconnect each share as a NFS volume.

    After you finish doing this for each share check your shares…

    C:\> NET USE

    You should now see all shares listed as “NFS Network”.

    C:\> EXIT the Command Prompt.

    Good luck.

    PS: Two things you will notice: the Thumbs.db files which are normally hidden under NTFS will now be visible, ignore them; you find file access a LOT faster as it doesn’t try to read each file multiple times as it previously was.

    Source:
    http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13332&p=65521#p65521

    By the way, the NFS is much slower then Samba i found out for lan to lan from Desktop to QNAP.

    Samba does 55-60 MB/s

    NFS does 22 MB/s

    Reply
  3. Moogle Stiltzkin says:
    July 5, 2010 at 15:19

    tested using firmware 3.2.6

    Firmwares 3.2.7 and 3.3.0 the performance took a dip in samba, which was why i reverted back to 3.2.6

    Reply

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