NFS Manager

Known Issues

There are currently no known problems that require additional documentation.

Release Notes

The kernel of older versions of macOS Ventura may cause NFS communication problems with third-party operating systems if the buffer size is greater than 64 KiB: When specific versions of macOS 13 try to send data to NFS software of a different operating system type (especially Unix systems with “System V”-like behavior), the network connection may fail if a buffer size greater than 65,536 bytes is negotiated in send direction of macOS. This can affect both server and client features. Access on the client side stops responding, or experiences severe performance problems.

Workaround: This is a known defect in older versions of macOS Ventura. Update to macOS 13.3 or later to fix this problem.

The Finder of macOS 12 and later may corrupt metadata while browsing objects via an NFS connection: If you have one of the preview features of the Finder enabled (e.g. the preview column in column view), browsing files via a connection to an NFS file server may corrupt the entry for last modification date (“mtime”) for each of the previewed files. The entry is set to the current date and time. Among other problems, this could cause significant issues with file synchronization or backups on the NFS file server.

Workaround: This is a known issue of the Finder and there is no known workaround other than to disable Finder preview. Apple has been made aware of this critical bug by us and other users. It is currently unknown if or when they will fix this defect.

After upgrading from macOS 10.12 Sierra or lower, a client might not correctly read files from NFSv4 servers created with previous versions of macOS, OS X, or Mac OS X: If you have used older versions of the operating system to write Macintosh files to an NFSv4 server, and the server implementation supports named attributes, and the files are using Extended Attributes or forks, these attributes and forks will become temporarily inaccessible after upgrading to macOS 11.0 Big Sur.

Workaround: This is a documented policy change in Apple’s NFSv4 client as of macOS 10.13. If you like to continue using named attributes over NFSv4, you will have to enable a new NFSv4 mount option on each client. This option is called Enforce extended attributes and named forks if supported by server in NFS Manager. For Apple’s documentation, enter the command man 5 nfs in Terminal.

If you add automount triggers to the Finder sidebar, the Finder may intermittently remove them: In case your system is configured to use NFS automounts, a user may drag the topmost folder of the automounted file system or an object from that hierarchy into the Favorites section of the sidebar of a Finder window. This way, the automount can be triggered easily, without needing an additional alias object on the Desktop. The Finder might unexpectedly lose such sidebar entries, however.

Workaround: This is a known issue of the Finder. We hope that Apple will resolve this problem in future versions of macOS. A possible alternative is to create an alias for the automounted folder (by using either the Finder or the feature Create Desktop icon of NFS Manager) and to drag the alias to the sidebar.

Some applications cannot process files on an NFS server if those files have not been created using the identical file service protocol: If you write a Macintosh file with Extended Attributes or forks to an NFS server using a different protocol (like AFP, or SMB, or a different NFS standard like NFSv3 vs. NFSv4, or by creating this file directly on the server writing it to the local hard disk), you may later have problems opening this file. Each file sharing protocol uses different techniques to handle Extended Attributes. Those techniques are not compatible with each other, so you cannot write a file with attributes using one protocol but read it with another protocol.

Workaround: You should avoid using different file server protocols at the same time when reading and writing Macintosh files with Extended Attributes. Even when you only use NFS, you must take care either not to allow simultaneous access via NFS3 and NFSv4, or to enforce matching options for the use of named attributes on all clients.

Server statistics can be empty: If you operate a Mac as an NFS server with macOS 12 or later, all server statistics features could be failing under specific circumstances. The related tables and overviews in NFS Manager either show the warning “No data available”, or NFS Manager omits the statistics item for server features altogether. Command line utilities respond with the error message nfssvc failed: Operation not permitted.

Workaround: This is a known defect of macOS 12 and several later versions of macOS. To fix this problem, use either macOS 11 or macOS 14.5 and later.