--- name: "mountd" section: "8" platform: "freebsd" package: "base" version: "16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79" release: "FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27)" platforms: ["linux", "freebsd", "openbsd", "macos"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/mountd" --- # mountd(8) service remote NFS mount requests ## NAME **mountd** – service remote NFS mount requests ## SYNOPSIS **mountd** \[**-2AadelNnRrSs**\] \[**-h** *bindip*\] \[**-p** *port*\] \[*exportsfile* *...*\] ## DESCRIPTION The **mountd** utility is the server for NFS mount requests from other client machines. It listens for service requests at the port indicated in the NFS server specification; see RFC1094, Appendix A and RFC1813, Appendix I. The following options are available: - **-2** Allow the administrator to force clients to use only the version 2 NFS protocol to mount file systems from this server. - **-A** Silence the warnings related to “administrative controls”. These warnings remind users that an exported “administrative control” directory that is not a local server file system mount point actually exports the entire local file system and not just the subtree below the directory exported. (See [exports(5)](/exports/5.md)) - **-a** Enforce the check for an exported directory being a file system mount point, if the **--alldirs** option is specified in [exports(5)](/exports/5.md) for the export file line. With this option, the exports line will fail, whereas without this option, a warning will be generated by syslog(8), but the export will be done. - **-d** Output debugging information. **mountd** will not detach from the controlling terminal and will print debugging messages to stderr. - **-e** Ignored; included for backward compatibility. - **-h** *bindip* Specify specific IP addresses to bind to for TCP and UDP requests. This option may be specified multiple times. If no **-h** option is specified, **mountd** will bind to INADDR\_ANY. Note that when specifying IP addresses with **-h**, **mountd** will automatically add 127.0.0.1 and if IPv6 is enabled, ::1 to the list. - **-l** Cause all succeeded **mountd** requests to be logged. - **-N** Cause **mountd** to execute in the foreground instead of in daemon mode. - **-n** Allow non-root mount requests to be served. This should only be specified if there are clients such as PC's, that require it. It will automatically clear the vfs.nfsd.nfs\_privport sysctl flag, which controls if the kernel will accept NFS requests from reserved ports only. - **-p** *port* Force **mountd** to bind to the specified port, for both AF\_INET and AF\_INET6 address families. This is typically done to ensure that the port which **mountd** binds to is a known quantity which can be used in firewall rulesets. If **mountd** cannot bind to this port, an appropriate error will be recorded in the system log, and the daemon will then exit. - **-R** Do not support the Mount protocol and do not register with [rpcbind(8)](/rpcbind/8.md). This can be done for NFSv4 only servers, since the Mount protocol is not used by NFSv4. Useful for NFSv4 only servers that do not wish to run [rpcbind(8)](/rpcbind/8.md). [showmount(8)](/showmount/8.md) will not work, however since NFSv4 mounts are not shown by [showmount(8)](/showmount/8.md), this should not be an issue for an NFSv4 only server. - **-r** Allow mount RPCs requests for regular files to be served. Although this seems to violate the mount protocol specification, some diskless workstations do mount requests for their swapfiles and expect them to be regular files. Since a regular file cannot be specified in */etc/exports*, the entire file system in which the swapfiles resides will have to be exported with the **-alldirs** flag. - *exportsfile* Specify an alternate location for the exports file. More than one exports file can be specified. - **-S** Tell mountd to suspend/resume execution of the nfsd threads whenever the exports list is being reloaded. This avoids intermittent access errors for clients that do NFS RPCs while the exports are being reloaded, but introduces a delay in RPC response while the reload is in progress. If **mountd** crashes while an exports load is in progress, **mountd** must be restarted to get the nfsd threads running again, if this option is used. - **-s** Cause **mountd** to skip automatic binding to localhost for IPv4 and IPv6. This option is meaningless unless **-h** has also been used. When **mountd** is started, it loads the export host addresses and options into the kernel using the [nmount(2)](/nmount/2.md) 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. If multiple instances of **mountd** are being run, either in multiple jails or both within and outside of a jail, care must be taken to export any given file system in only one of the instances. Note that the *allow.nfsd* jail parameter is required to allow **mountd** to run in a jail. See [jail(8)](/jail/8.md) for more information. If **mountd** detects that the running kernel does not include NFS support, it will attempt to load a loadable kernel module containing NFS code, using [kldload(2)](/kldload/2.md). If this fails, or no NFS KLD was available, **mountd** exits with an error. When run in a jail, the [kldload(2)](/kldload/2.md) must be done outside the jail, typically by adding “nfsd” to *kld\_list* in the [rc.conf(5)](/rc.conf/5.md) file on the jail host. ## FILES - */etc/exports* the list of exported file systems - */var/run/mountd.pid* the pid of the currently running mountd - */var/db/mountdtab* the current list of remote mounted file systems ## SEE ALSO [nfsstat(1)](/nfsstat/1.md), [kldload(2)](/kldload/2.md), [nfsv4(4)](/nfsv4/4.md), [exports(5)](/exports/5.md), [rc.conf(5)](/rc.conf/5.md), [jail(8)](/jail/8.md), [nfsd(8)](/nfsd/8.md), [rpcbind(8)](/rpcbind/8.md), [showmount(8)](/showmount/8.md), syslog(8) ## HISTORY The **mountd** utility first appeared in 4.4BSD.