Guide: Setting up NFS in WHS

by Damian on December 11, 2009 · 144 comments

in Guides

About a month ago I did a write up on setting up Samba sharing in WHS. Today I will take a look at setting up Network File System (NFS)in WHS. Like SMB and HTTP, NFS is another mechanism that some media streaming devices use to allow access to your files over the network. The main reason why I decided to test out NFS is because I kept running into performance issues with SMB on some of my media players (i.e. PCH C-200 and Xtreamer) and NFS has been noted to perform better with large files. We are going to use the free Windows Services for UNIX software.

Files Needed:

Installing The Windows Services Software in WHS:

- Extract all files from the Windows Services download (I just extract to a folder labeled “NFS” on my desktop) and run “SfuSetup.msi”. Click “Next” on  the welcome screen to get started. The installation process is relatively easy with most selections being the default selections, but I will go through each step.

NFS Setup1

- Customer Information – Verify your customer information. I just left the default information in place

NFS Setup2

- License and Support Information – Accept the End-User License Agreement

NFS Setup3

- Installation Options – We are only going to need the NFS components, so select “Custom Installation”

NFS Setup4

- Select Components – Select only “Server for NFS” and “Server for NFS authentication”. Make sure a red X is next to all other components

NFS Setup5

NFS Setup6

NFS Setup7

- Security settings - leave this unchecked and hit Next

NFS Setup8

- User Name Mapping – Make sure “Local User Name Mapping Server” and “Network Information Service (NIS)” are selected and click Next. Make sure your Windows Domain Name is selected (in my case \\HPSTORAGE for the EX495) and click Next.

NFS Setup9

NFS Setup10

- Installation Location – choose the drive you want the Windows Services installed, I chose the C: drive.

NFS Setup11

- You should have now successfully completed the Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX Setup wizard.

NFS Setup12

Configuring The NFS Server Mapping:

With everything now installed it is time to configure the user name mapping for the NFS server. Go to Start Menu -> All Programs -> Windows Services for UNIX -> Services for UNIX Administration

NFS Setup13

- Highlight “User Name Mapping”. Under Configuration select “Use Password and Group files”. In the section below click “Browse…” and select the “password.txt” file for “Password file path and name:”, and “group.txt” file for “Group file path and name:”. Once done click the Apply button at the upper right hand corner.

NFS Setup14

- Now go to the “Maps” section and do the following:

- select “Show User Maps”
- click “Lists Windows Users” and “List UNIX Users”
- select “Guest” under “Windows users:”, and “root” under “UNIX users:”
- click “Add” button and the entry will appear at the bottom “Mapped users:” box

NFS Setup15

- select “Show Group Maps”
- click “Lists Windows Groups” and “List UNIX Groups”
- select “Guests” under “Windows groups:”, and “root” under “UNIX groups:”
- click “Add” button and the entry will appear at the bottom “Mapped groups:” box
- finally click the upper right “Apply” button.

NFS Setup16

Configuring Windows Firewall:

- To make sure the NFS Server works properly the next step is to add exceptions to the Windows Firewall. Go to Control Panel -> Windows Firewall, click on the “Exception” tab, and then click on the “Add Port” button. The following exceptions should be added:

- RPC portmap port: TCP and UDP 111
- Sun Neo port: TCP and UDP 1048
- NFS port: TCP and UDP 2049

NFS Setup21

- When completed you should now see the six exceptions created in the list of “Programs and Services:”

NFS Setup22

Enabling NFS Sharing:

- We are almost there! The last step is to enable nfs sharing for the folder(s) you wish to share. Navigate to the folder you wish to share via Windows Explorer (in my case I wanted to share my “shares” folder on my D: drive). Right click on the folder, select properties, go to the “NFS Sharing” tab, and select “Share this folder”. If you decide to change the Share Name make sure you use only alphanumeric characters and the name is case sensitive.

NFS Setup19

- Now click the “Permissions” button, select “Allow root access” and click “Apply”

NFS Setup18

- Finally, go to the “Sharing” tab, select “Share this folder”, and click “Apply”

NFS Setup20

- As a confirmation to make sure the NFS Server is running go into Services under the Control Panel. Locate “Server for NFS” and hopefully its status should be “Started”. You can also stop and restart the service from here.

NFS Setup17

Guest Sharing:

Do for the following “WHS” share of the D:\shares drive:

Under “Sharing->Permissions” add the user “Guest” with read-only access.

Under “Permissions” add the user “Guest” with read&execute, list and read permissions.

Miscellaneous:

- If you are going to connect a media player to your WHS via NFS the address used is slightly different then with smb. Using my PCH C-200 as an example, under smb my network share address would be smb://MyServer/Videos. Under NFS the network share address would be nfs://MyServer:/Videos (take note of the additional “:”).

- If you are unable to download the Password.txt and/or Group.txt files you can create easily. Open up notepad and copy/paste the below text:

(for group.txt)

root:x:0:
nmt:x:1001:

(for password.txt)

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/sh
nmt:x:1001:1001:nmt:/nmt:/bin/sh

- I can confirm that issues I had streaming via SMB were resolved by streaming via NFS. This seems to be device specific though, so I would try SMB first before attempting NFS.

Source:

Pixel Magic

UPDATE – I JUST POSTED MY NFS FOR WHS 2011 GUIDE :)

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2011/12/23/guide-setting-up-nfs-in-whs-2011/


Article by

Hi, my name is Damian, and I'm tech gadget addict! Although I always had some interest in technology, it wasn't until I got my EX470 and more importantly found Mediasmartserver.net, that my interest became an addiction. My goal, aside from world domination and to see the Mets/Broncos win another championship, is to set up the perfect digital home where all my media is available at the click of a button. When I am not writing for Mediasmartserver.net you can find me over at my blog at http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com or follow me on twitter


{ 138 comments }

Chris December 14, 2009 at 9:25 am

Thank you for this great guide, I have just set this up remotely on my server and will test it out tonight, I just hope that it will show my isos and MKV files as when I tried a Samba share on my PCH C-200 they vanished.

One other thing, do you know how to set up YAMJ on the home server, I just want everything stored on the home server so it can be updated easily, a guide for that would be brilliant.

Thanks again for the information

Damian December 14, 2009 at 9:37 am

That is interesting, they vanished??? I have run into some weird stuff on my C-200 but disappearing files I have not had a problem with (yet).

As far as a YAMJ guide for WHS I think you are pushing it!! Just kidding, I actually already have in the works :-). I have YAMJ running with smb/nfs on my WHS, I wanted to run through it with myiHome so I could document all setups. It is actually not that difficult to do but can be a PITA at first. I was planning to have a YAMJ writeup as one of my next posts here, I will move it up on the priority list since you asked.

Chris December 14, 2009 at 9:48 am

Apparently its something to do with Windows Home Server, If I map the drive on the C-200 it will not show mkv’s or isos. If I just browse the network from the main menu screen they are all there, this is on a Samba share.

Hopefully NFS will solve it, as far as YAMJ goes I know how it all works as I ran it for a while off an internal hard drive, its just how to set it up so the C-200 knows to stream from the WHS that is confusing me.

Great site by the way, heard your other writer on the Home Server Show today thats how I came across it.

Chris

Damian December 14, 2009 at 10:20 am

If you have set up YAMJ before all you need to do is to link up to your PCH share (so for instance I had created a smb network share called “SMB Share” on my PCH) and then have the HTML files saved to a network share folder that you can access. I used the YAMJ GUI to do this.

You must have heard Nigel aka “Cougar” talking, we let him out of his cage every once in a while to play :-)

Any other questions just let me know here or shoot me an email

Cheers
Damian

Chris December 14, 2009 at 2:18 pm

I followed the instructions but when I go to add the network share on the PCH C-200 it sees the ip address of the WHS, i select it and it just says the action could not be completed after a few minutes, any ideas

Thanks
Chris

Damian December 14, 2009 at 2:30 pm

Did you try typing in the NFS address (i.e. nfs://MyServer:/Videos ) directly or you tried to browser to the NFS? EIther way should work. Another thing to try, rdp into your WHS and restart the “Server for NFS” service just to make sure it is up and running (for whatever reason I needed to do this at some point during my first few attempts).

Chris December 14, 2009 at 3:35 pm

Got a bit further on, i can add the server in now but when i go to the network it just says cannot complete request, then share folder no longer exists

Chris

Damian December 14, 2009 at 4:03 pm

Can you navigate to the NFS server via network share – browsing in the PCH C-200?

Chris December 14, 2009 at 4:06 pm

I have sorted it, i had to unshare the shares folder then just share the videos folder and all my media has appeared, even better i can now stream m2ts blu ray rips in perfect quality, before without nfs they stuttered badly, i cannot thank you enough for this guide

Damian December 14, 2009 at 4:09 pm

That is awesome Chris, glad you found the guide useful. Now stop posting comments and go watch a movie :-)

Air Hi-5!!!

Sil January 6, 2010 at 7:41 am

Hi Damian,

I recently bought both the Mediasmart server (490) and the PCH C-200. I followed your instructions for setting up NFS. The PCH discovered the NFS automatically. When I try to open it I get the message ‘This request can’t be processed” I can even navigate to the shared folder (shares) but when I try to open it I get the same error. Any ideas perhaps?
I didn’t give in any usernames/password do I need to that. I have quest account enabled in Mediasmart.

Sil

Chris January 6, 2010 at 7:47 am

I had similar problems, try rebooting the popcorn C-200 a few times and also i had to unshare the shares folder then just share the videos folder and all my media has appeared, even better i can now stream m2ts blu ray rips in perfect quality

Damian January 6, 2010 at 7:52 am

Hi Sill,

Just out of curiousity, are you running beta firmware on your C-200? The latest beta firmware actually broke NFS on the C-200, I am hoping this gets fixed when the next firmware comes out at the end of the week.

Also, did you try restarting the NFS server on the WHS?

Chris above mentioned he had to unshare the shares folder and the reshare just the videos folder which works for him (I have the main shares folder shared).

Sil January 6, 2010 at 11:13 am

I’m running the latest beta firmware on the C-200 so I think that’s the problem. I’m gonna try what Chris suggested, hopefully it works. Going back to latest official firmware gives other problems which were solved in the beta. Hmmm tough one. Let you know about the progress. Thanx both for the help sofar!

Damian January 6, 2010 at 11:29 am

Sil,

If you are running the latest beta fw there is no hope :-(. I have made Syabas aware of the problem as has others, but NFS was definitely shot down inadvertantly. Hopefully when Firmware Friday comes along this will be fixed (as well as a new UI). Let me know if you happen to have any luck with Chris’ suggestion.

Sil January 6, 2010 at 1:53 pm

Ok thanx Damian. I’m glad I know the problem is most likely in the firmware, it saves me a lot of trouble shooting in the settings ;-). Is the new firmware coming friday a beta version or a normal firmware update?

Damian January 6, 2010 at 2:04 pm

Yeah, i was helping someone else troubleshoot NFS and then suddenly it stopped working for me (boy did I look like a fool!!!). My way to test is I have an Xtreamer that uses NFS as well, and since that still worked it was obvious it was a C-200 issue. I am not sure if the next FW update will be beta or not. I have to believe that at a minimum NFS will be fixed, I have YAMJ pointed to my NFS share so I basically loss use of that.

If the new update has any significant enhancements to the UI I will definitely do another post here.

Damian January 6, 2010 at 2:32 pm

FYI – new FW should be out any minute now, so we should have the answers to our questions (hopefully)

Damian January 6, 2010 at 2:57 pm

@ Sil,

Looks like the FW just released is beta firmware. Looks like just fixes, but NFS should be fixed, I will test when I get home:

4.) (FIXED) Network Browser cant find Windows Server (Services for Unix) NFS anymore

Chris January 6, 2010 at 3:34 pm

I have had no issues with nfs on any of the recent betas, weird how we all experience different bugs

Damian January 6, 2010 at 6:38 pm

It was only the very last beta update that killed nfs, don’t know if you were running the very latest as everyone else confirmed it killed nfs on WHS. Going to install the just released fw now and see if that fixes everything

Sil January 7, 2010 at 12:14 am

I don’t know if I have the latest firmware. I’m running 02-01-091211-19-POP-408-999. Did the the new beta solve your problems Damian?
By the way: Is there a spot where you can see (and download) the latest firmware for the C-200. I’m not in the beta program.

Haven’t had the time yet to try Chris his suggestions. Let you know.

Damian January 7, 2010 at 5:16 am

Yes, downloaded the latest beta firmware last night and NFS is working again.

You can find the official firmware here – http://www.popcornhour.com/download/C200/firmware-C200.html

Or on the NMT forums here – http://www.networkedmediatank.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=11

Now if I could only figure out how to get forced subs to display correctly…

Sil January 11, 2010 at 1:25 pm

It works !!!! I did what Chris said, unshare the shares folder, share the videos folder, reboot the C-200 and there is NFS. I loked at a blu-ray iso, 43 Gb in size, Dolby true HD track and not one hick-up during play back. Great!
I only have one problem left. I don’t see any folders with a movie in it, like a blu-ray folder with a bdmv map or an DVD folder with a video-ts map. Any thoughts on that? I do see them using SMB.
Yesterday an new firmware was launched for the C-200, only for download yet. I haven’t installed it yet afraid my NFS won’t work anymore ;-)

Next challenge will be introducing something like YAMJ on the C-200/WHS for the movie info.

Thanks for all the help so far!

Damian January 11, 2010 at 1:29 pm

Great news Sil. Regarding folders you shouldn’t see those, the C-200 should automatically recognize those folder structures as a DVD/BR Disc and play automatically.

Also, I am running the very latest firmware and it did not break NFS. I would recommend you update to the latest.

As far as YAMJ, what if I told you I will have a post published in the next day or two documenting how I set up YAMJ + Aeon on my C-200 (just got it working this weekend and in the process of writing up) :-)

Cheers
Damian

Chris January 11, 2010 at 1:33 pm

That is great news, its weird but thats how it worked for me, as for YAMJ, mine works perfectly and looks awesome too, you have to get it working

Damian January 11, 2010 at 1:39 pm

Chris,

When you go into your NFS share on your C-200 does it automatically go into your YAMJ jukebox or do you have to select the index.htm? It used to work with smb but for NFS I have to manually choose the htm file (I think this is just because my chare is not at the video level but at the share level above).

Sil January 11, 2010 at 1:40 pm

I don’t see the movies at all, that’s the weird thing. So nothing to select no name folder or anything. With SMB I just go to the name of the movie select it and it starts running (like you discribed). But with NFS I see nothing except the iso’s or a folder with movies like WMV-HD files in it. But you convinced me upgrading to the latest firmware so maybe that will solve the problem.

About the YAMJ setting up guide, that’s great news! Looking forward to it !

Damian January 11, 2010 at 1:45 pm

That is weird. I don’t have many Video_TS or BDMV folders so maybe I just missed. I will check when I get home and let you know.

Chris January 11, 2010 at 1:45 pm

Yes it does and when I restart the popcorn it automatically goes to the last source location which is the nfs share and auto loads the yamj interface, perfect

Damian January 12, 2010 at 9:12 am

Sil – I confirmed that my Video_TS and BDMV folders can be accessed and play as if a disc is present. Hopefully when you update to the latest firmware this will resolve your issue.

Adam January 13, 2010 at 4:42 pm

Hey guys, After extracting the files from the windows services download and running SfuSetup.msi and clicking run program i get an error message:

Setup has detected that a required system service (tcp/ip) is not currently installed on your system.

can anyone help? Sorry for the noobish question.

Damian January 14, 2010 at 2:19 pm

@ Adam,

Never seen that message before. Did you at any point in the past uninstall a service that you can think of?

Adam January 14, 2010 at 2:51 pm

Hey Damian, no not as i can think of.. It isn’t windows specific is it? I.e. not Vista compatible? Cheers.

Ad.

Damian January 14, 2010 at 2:56 pm

You are trying to set up in Vista or WHS?

Sil January 15, 2010 at 6:11 am

Hi Damian, thanks for checking.

I upgraded the firmware. Unfortunately the folders are still not visible.
I posted this problem also on the Networked Media Tank forum maybe that someone recognizes this problem.

Damian January 15, 2010 at 6:20 am

Sil,

Real sorry it is not working, hopefully someone on NMT has encountered this problem before as I am at a loss.

gary January 19, 2010 at 1:47 am

Hi there,
I have an xtreamer with stuttering problems when streaming BD so i thought i would give this a try.
I have an HP EX485 Media server, similar to yours.

As for your instructions above, am I running it off of my pc that is connected to the EX485? or should I put all the files into the Software folder of the EX485 and run it from there? I thought the former but when I get to the screen where your article states:
” User Name Mapping – Make sure “Local User Name Mapping Server” and “Network Information Service (NIS)” are selected and click Next. Make sure your Windows Domain Name is selected (in my case \\HPSTORAGE for the EX495) and click Next.”

The only pull down menu is for my computer(\\sempron3000) as my windows domain name, not the HP unit.
I have tried running it from within the EX485 by copying over all the files to the EX485′s software folder where HP recommends running the file but when I get to the same page, again my only option is the “\\sempron3000″ which is the computer I have the WHS console installed on.
So i am a bit confused i guess. I can’t go on any further in the process until i clear this part.
Please help! Thanks

Damian January 19, 2010 at 2:40 am

Gary,

How I installed is I downloaded the files to my shared software folder. I then RDP’d into WHS, copied the files from the shared software folder onto the desktop of my WHS machine, and ran from there. My guess the issue is you are trying to install from a shared drive and not from your WHS/EX485 itself. Give this a try and let me know if it helps. NFS is the only way I can get stutter free playback on my Xtreamer.

Ragnar February 5, 2010 at 12:46 am

Hi,

Great work !!
Assuming this guide will work on WIN2003 also ?

Damian February 5, 2010 at 5:11 am

Hi Ragner,

I see no reason why it shouldn’t work for Win2003

Sil February 6, 2010 at 3:42 am

Hi Damian,

Just to let you know I solved the issue of not seeing some files using NFS.
It was a rights question. In NFS I share the Vidoes folder. I download my videos files in a seperate download folder on the WHS. After downloading I moved the files tot the vidoes folder. I did see them on the SMB share but not in NFS. A while ago I copied (instead of moved) a downloaded file to the videos folder. To my suprise it then was visible in NFS. I seems that when you move a file it copies the rights of the folder it was from. But when yoy copy a file it gets the rights of the folder it is copied to, in my case the videos folder.

After setting the rights of all the files equal to the videos folder they became visible in NFS.
Every video file plays now like a charm.

Now the next challenge setting up YAMJ :-)

Sil

Damian February 6, 2010 at 4:35 am

That is great to hear Sil. Hopefully YAMJ should be pretty easy to set up. The challenge is that there are all these tweaks that you can do, so sometimes it gets a little overwhelming to keep track of

Cheers
Damian

Steve February 7, 2010 at 9:03 am

Hi Damian,
I used this guide to setup NFS server on my WHS. I have both a A-200 and a C-200 with latest firmware. I share my Videos folder only. Both PCH units have the same problem: when I go to Network Browser, the NFS Server, then my WHS IP address, I see the Videos share. When I try to access it, the PCH locks up and needs a hard reboot. Any idea what could be going on? It obviously sees the NFS server, and the share, but it can’t enumerate it. I’ve given it like 15min but it is clearly locked because it does not respond to any remote commands and the “hourglass” is not spinning.

TIA,
shoek

geir February 23, 2010 at 11:59 am

Hi

I’m trying to download the group.txt and the password.txt, but the bewsite is down. Do you know anything about that?

Damian February 23, 2010 at 12:02 pm

Looks like MediaFire is down.

For group.txt copy and paste into notepad and save:

root:x:0:
nmt:x:1001:

For password.txt cop and paste into notepad and save:

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/sh
nmt:x:1001:1001:nmt:/nmt:/bin/sh

geir February 23, 2010 at 12:05 pm

Thank you :)

geir February 23, 2010 at 12:58 pm

Hi again.

I dont know what this means “Make sure your Windows Domain Name is selected”. I only have a name for the machine. I don’t use domain name, I only use a workgroupname. Do I have to have a domain name to get the NFS-server to work?

Damian February 23, 2010 at 1:18 pm

The Domain name is the name of the machine. So in my example the name of my machine was HPStorage

geir February 24, 2010 at 2:04 am

I finally got it to work :). Strange thing happends. When I connect with SMB I got a readspeed at 10,5 MB/s, but with NFS it’s only 3,3 MB/s. I don’t know what’s causes this. Any idea?

Damian February 24, 2010 at 2:46 am

@ geir,

That is very strange, NFS should be the same if not slightly higher then SMB. Do you videos play back fine?

geir February 24, 2010 at 3:14 am

No, not from the NFS mount. They shutter. From the SMB mount everythings works fine. I’m about to take a new install of WHS with new disks, so I will come back to you. Thanks for your help so far :)

Anatoly March 4, 2010 at 1:33 am

Hi!
I followed the instructions but when I going to add the IP/Host name (Popcorn C-200, Last Firmware), I could not add symbol “:” after IP/Host name –I have alert “Invalid IP Address or host name”.
When I try access via Network browser, I can see shared directory, but I have message “Request cannot be processed”.
Can anyone help me?

Damian March 4, 2010 at 5:43 am

Instead of typing in the address manually, go into your Setup Menu on your PCH, go to Network Shared, Browse, and navigate to your NFS share. You should be able to add it directly from there instead of having to type in.

Anatoly March 5, 2010 at 5:37 am

Hi, Demian!
I do it, but I have message “Request cannot be processed” again.

Anatoly March 5, 2010 at 6:31 am

Nothing happened. Again I received a message “Request cannot be processed”.

Damian March 7, 2010 at 2:59 pm

Did you try either restarting your WHS or restarting the NFS server. For whatever reason I have to do that once in a while

Anatoly March 20, 2010 at 11:20 am

Hi, Demian!
I downloaded the latest firmware,
Several times I rebooted the NMT C-200, WHS, Server for NFS.
Settings all the correct, as in your guide.
In the log appears the message:
DATE TIME TASK RESULT ADDRESS DESCRIPTION…
————————————————————————-
03-20-2010 19:58:24 MOUNT SUCCESS 192.168.1.99 D:\shares\BT_Downloads

But I have message “Request cannot be processed” again.
Any Ideas
Anatoly

Mike March 20, 2010 at 4:04 pm

I have the same problem as Anatoly after uppgrade to 3.0
“Request cannot be processed om my Popcorn!?

DamianP March 20, 2010 at 4:23 pm

So it was working fine until you guys upgraded to the latest HP 3.0 software? I don’t have an MSS anymore so just confirming, my WHS is up to date I believe

Mike March 21, 2010 at 5:43 am

Yes, before 3.0 everything worked perfect!

Anatoly March 21, 2010 at 6:27 am

P.S. I have Acer Aspire easyStore H340 (updated).
Is it possible to test the NFS server without using Popcorn C-200?

DamianP March 21, 2010 at 6:42 am

You would need a player (or maybe another PC?) that can access the NFS. I have an Xtreamer which can access the NFS, so t hat is what I use to determine whether NFS is down or it is just a PCH issue.

Mike March 26, 2010 at 3:30 pm

Got it working now… You need to add some rights to the Windows share!

Damian March 27, 2010 at 4:48 pm

So did 3.0 reset some rights as it was working before the update, correct?

Nathan April 1, 2010 at 10:53 am

What rights for the share do you have to set? This isn’t working for me, the movies won’t play at all. I had a similar problem with a SMB share, and adding in an account and giving that account rights fixed it, but I don’t see where to do this for NFS…

digger April 12, 2010 at 10:16 am

I have the same problem like Chris: I followed the instructions. The browser shows my WHS server under NFS server. Selecting the WHS server shows the folders videos and music which are shared. Selecting videos shows the message that the request could not be completed. So I see the NFS shared folder “videos” but cannot acces the files within that folder. Any idea?
THX
digger

Damian April 14, 2010 at 11:21 am

@ digger,

Sounds like a rights issue. Mike mentioned that he had to add some rights to his window share, not sure what he did though

Tony May 3, 2010 at 8:19 pm

Hi Damain,

I’m having the same issue as Steve back on Feb 7th. I can see the root folder, but as soon as I select it, I get a hard lock and my A200 cant see the folders inside. Samba works fine. Any ideas? Thanks!?!?

I think the people with the cant be completed issue, did you try enabling the guest account?

Tony May 4, 2010 at 7:33 pm

Ok, Im an idiot. I had jumbo frames enabled on my whs. Once I turned that off, everything worked like a charm.

FYI to others out there with the same issue. Disable jumbo frames till Sybas fixes their gigabit adapters

Damian May 5, 2010 at 1:08 pm

@ Tony,

Interesting, I would have never thought of that. I wonder how many other people who have had problems with NFS was due to Jumbo Frames. Thanks for sharing the info :-)

Matthias May 7, 2010 at 11:48 am

Hello,
I also got the problem, that I can see the NFS share but when I try to access it (I use a C-200) I get an error.
I once used it on a Acer h340, worked, a bit later on a XP Pro System, also ok.
Now I got my self a new selfbuild Homeserver, it wont do it any more.
It is a fresh installed system, with all Updates, is this may the problem?
To me it look’s as I have got the same problem as Digger.
Did anyone figure out, what Mike did, so that it is working for him?

Would be nice to tell the others, what You have done to solfe the problem…..

Kevin May 21, 2010 at 9:46 am

Thanks Damian for an excellent guide. It made it simple for me to setup NFS on my WHS last night. However after setting it up and creating the share on my PCH C200 the PCH couldn’t see any of the files. After reading all the comments here and noticing the comment from “Mike” on sharing changes, I did the following to my “WHS” share of the D:\shares drive:

Under “Sharing->Permissions” I added the user “Guest” with read-only access.

Under “Permissions” I added the user “Guest” with read&execute, list and read permissions.

Once I did that my PCH read the share just fine and now my YAMJ is running fine with an NFS share instead of SMB. I can also use the Lundman shell into my PCH and cd to /opt/sybhttpd/localhost.drives/NETWORK_SHARE/WHS and do an ‘ls’ to see what’s there. Before changing the sharing/security settings above I couldn’t see anything.

Damian May 21, 2010 at 9:53 am

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for sharing. When I have a moment I will update the guide to reflect the changes you made.

islander84 June 8, 2010 at 9:11 pm

Damian
I have been reading your posts here and your blog looking for some answers. I have just built my first HTPC and DIY home server. I am looking for the best front end player to access my media files while using the best way to back up my media files (dont want to mirror because i am already at 10TB of DVD and Bluray and dont want to use up another 10TB for backup). I have windows 7 on my HTPC and am setting up the bitstreaming using MPC HC after reading your post. I am installing WHS on my tower that is very similar to your build. Any thoughts would be great. I live on a military base overseas right now and all we have is dialup on base so downloading and testing is not really an option for me at this point as downloads take forever. I am hoping you can give me some input on what you think is best player to use, best DVD/Blu-ray ripper to use (i have used DVDfab for DVDs to .avi format, but never blurays), and best way to have some redundancy without mirroring.

Damian June 9, 2010 at 4:03 pm

@ islander84,

When you say player, are you talking about a front end (such as WMC or XBMC) for your HTPC to use for playback, or are you talking about a separate media player (such as a Popcorn Hour or Dune) for playback?

I honestly prefer to put all my movies (DVDs and Blu Rays) into mkv format. I don’t encode, I only keep the main movie and main HD audio track. You can see some of the methods for creating mkvs here (http://www.mediasmartserver.net/tag/mkv/)

WHS Vail v.2 June 10, 2010 at 2:05 am

Whether NFS will work on WHS Vail v.2?

islander84 June 10, 2010 at 3:37 pm

I am refering to a front end player for my HTPC. i downloaded the MPC HC, but am waiting on a receiver to arrive before setting up the bitsreaming and checking it out. My process is much slower as i have to find places that will ship to APO addresses and my download times are probably the slowest on earth. We are dial up which then goes over a satellite to california. Anything larger than a song usually times out before it downloads so i have to retry over and over until it finally finishes. I am also looking for a backup method that is reliable, but less space required as mirroring.

islander84 June 10, 2010 at 3:48 pm

I looked into FlexRAID after seeing it on AVSForum, but i am not sure if i have the tech savvy to set it up.

Damian June 10, 2010 at 3:56 pm

@ islander84,

MPC HC is definitely the best to use for bitstreaming. I would recommend using W7MC + Mediabrowser. Other alternatives would be W7MC + MyMovies or XBMC. For all three of t hese choices it is easy to set up MPC HC to launch as a 3rd party player and it integrates fairly seemless. Let me know if you have any other questions that I can help out on.

I was curious about FlexRaid as well, but just didn’t feel like messing around with my 16TB worth of data. WHS just works for me, even if I do lose half my space due to duplication.

Tim August 5, 2010 at 10:30 am

Hi Damian and thank you for this detailed and extremely helpful article.

This may be an incredibly stupid question, but I cant seem to find an answer for it.

When installing the application, it asks me for my Domain. The only domain that shows up in the drop-down is PCBasement, which is of course the PC in my basement. I assume that the domain I need to add in here is my HPMS Server, right? In that case, how do I assign a domain to the MS Server so that it shows up in the drop down?

Thank you once again, I really appreciate any help you can provide.

Tim

Damian August 5, 2010 at 10:38 am

@ Tim,

Just to confirm, you are installing this on your HPMS Server and not your PC, correct? Your server domain name should be \\MyServer (where MyServer is the name of your server)

Tim August 5, 2010 at 10:48 am

…ARGH! I’m an idiot. I was installing this onto my PC. So, just to be clear for dunces like me…should I run a remote desktop session on the server and install it on my HPMS server?

Tim

Damian August 5, 2010 at 10:57 am

Haha, no problem, we have all been there! Yes, you should rdp in to your MSS and install there (that is where the NFS server will run from)

Tim August 5, 2010 at 12:23 pm

LOL! Thanks Damian. I really appreciate your assistance and the great article you wrote that started this whole thing in the first place.

Cheers!

Tim August 5, 2010 at 8:26 pm

Hi Damian,

I successfully setup the NFS server piece and was able to browse for the Share within the Network Share menu of my C200 and select it. Unfortunately, every time I click on it wihtin the sources menu, it comes back with the error “Request cannot be processed”.

I checked the permissions on the shared drive, restarted my C200, the NFS server and my WHS. Any ideas?

Damian August 6, 2010 at 12:05 am

Hi Tim,

Although I don’t have issues, others users did the below to fix the permission issue, let me know if this works:
————————————————————–
Thanks Damian for an excellent guide. It made it simple for me to setup NFS on my WHS last night. However after setting it up and creating the share on my PCH C200 the PCH couldn’t see any of the files. After reading all the comments here and noticing the comment from “Mike” on sharing changes, I did the following to my “WHS” share of the D:\shares drive:

Under “Sharing->Permissions” I added the user “Guest” with read-only access.

Under “Permissions” I added the user “Guest” with read&execute, list and read permissions.

Once I did that my PCH read the share just fine and now my YAMJ is running fine with an NFS share instead of SMB. I can also use the Lundman shell into my PCH and cd to /opt/sybhttpd/localhost.drives/NETWORK_SHARE/WHS and do an ‘ls’ to see what’s there. Before changing the sharing/security settings above I couldn’t see anything.

Robert August 8, 2010 at 11:22 pm

I’m having the same problems as everyone above – - i can see the videos, but when I click on them, i get an error. Please help!

Damian August 9, 2010 at 7:09 am

@ Robert,

Did you try the extra steps listed just above your comment?

Robert August 9, 2010 at 9:03 am

I messed around with it for a long time, then figured it out.

My problem was that I needed to rename the NFS share to “VIDEOS” and then make sure when I set it up on the PCH that I used “VIDEOS” in the name of the file share.

Not the nfs://MyServer:/Videos, but the one above that (sorry not in front of my PCH at the moment).

Failed to read “If you decide to change the Share Name make sure you use only alphanumeric characters and the name is case sensitive.” Although, this should be changed to NEEDS to be changed so that it matches what you call it on the PCH.

Also, FYI, my understanding is that nfs-tcp is faster than nfs-udp. To enable nfs-tcp, you need to make the following change:

nfs-tcp://MyServer:/Videos

I am up and running and hope to test later tonight. My issue was that my HD video with HD Audio would sometimes stutter with SMB share. Hopefully, NFS addresses the stutter. Should i be using HTTP and not NFS for speed? Is HTTP sharing compatible with YAMJ?

Robert August 9, 2010 at 9:06 am

I should note that I have a GB router and a GB switch hardwired with CAT 6 throughout. HD video and audio would still occassionally stutter with the SMB share. Really hoping that NFS takes care of that.

Damian August 9, 2010 at 9:19 am

@ Robert,

Correct, the share name needs to match for it to work. Sorry, I meant to mention that in my comment back, as that is a common problem people have with playback not working. What PCH product are you using? SMB performance has improved greatly with the beta fw, so hopefully when it gets released to the public (hopefully this week or next) it will fix any stuttering problems. HTTP is compatible with YAMJ as well, but the one issue with HTTP is that it does not work with Folder Structures (i.e. Video_TS or BDMV). I have MyiHome (HTTP) installed on my WHS just as a fallback along with NFS, but primarily use smb.

Robert August 9, 2010 at 9:24 am

I have the A-110. Was going to purchase the A-200, but not having HD Audio with M2TS files is a deal breaker for me.

I just updated the firmware on the A-110 to the most recent (March 2010). Is the new beta firmware that addresses SMB shares for the A-110 as well? Do you know when they will be releasing the firmware that addresses HD audio in M2TS files for the A-200?

Damian August 9, 2010 at 9:30 am

Standalone M2TS/MKV bitstreaming should be working on the A-200 in the next few weeks. It works already with the beta fw I have on the C-200 which is supposed to be released to the public in about a week, and then to A-200 owners soon after.

The smb issues/beta fw updates were not related to the A-110, just the C-200/A-200

Rex September 8, 2010 at 8:44 pm

This guide was a lifesaver for me! Thanks so much Damian! My Bluray ISO files playback without stutter on my Xtreamer now. I might even put off buying a new media player now that this is working. Just awesome!

TMan September 11, 2010 at 8:20 pm

I tried to install this on Windows 7 x64 but it won’t install (incompatible). Is there a version that is compatible with Win7??

Damian September 12, 2010 at 5:46 am

Yeah, this won’t work on W7 x64. I am not sure if there is a free NFS software for this. I know there is software such as Allegro NFS but I have never tried:

http://www.nfsforwindows.com/home

Akshay September 23, 2010 at 9:52 pm

Hi Damian,
I am doing an NFS share for some testing. when i install the file(217MB), during the installation it asks me for domain name and by default it says \\somename, should i keep it the same way or should i change it to something else. I am doing this in my company for the lab setup! when i see the computer name it says ds.mot.com, should i give that in my domain name or let \\somename be there and proceed forward?

Damian October 18, 2010 at 9:31 am

I believe the Domain name should be the name of the PC. For example, in my walkthrough the WHS computer I used was named HPStorage, so the domain name was \\HPStorage

Seth November 24, 2010 at 7:32 am

Making sure the Guest account is enabled on the WHS is something that should be right at the top of any guide for installing NFS under WHS. That single item has caused more headaches for people I know who’ve done it than any single other step.

Damian November 24, 2010 at 7:42 am

Seth – this is something I actually have in my to do list to add (of course it has been sitting on my to do list for way too long). Thanks for the reminder, I will get that added in the next few days

Jacob November 25, 2010 at 4:08 pm

Hi Damian,

I too had performance issues on my mediaplayer exactly as you described.
Tried your solution and it worked perfectly! Thanks for you clear howto and I was surprised how easy it was to find in Google.

Regards,

Jacob

Jeff December 31, 2010 at 3:17 pm

Hi,

I have been having some buffering issues lately with big (30-40 GB blu ray rips) and found NFS as a solution.

My setup is a WHS streaming over wired gigabit to a new core i3 build, which plays things fine locally….

I followed this guide,

I have the service on my Win 7 ultimate and have been using:
mount Server:/Shares V:\

I get a V drive and it has the right size when I right click but sometimes it says access is denied, and others it opens and simply says Folder is empty…

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
-Jeff

(Happy new Year BTW)

Jacob January 1, 2011 at 8:38 am

@Jeff,

Hi, please check if Guest account is enabled on your WHS.
It took me a while before I figured this out.

Happy new Year!

Jacob

Damian January 3, 2011 at 8:54 am

That is my fault for not being more clear on enabling Guest Account. I set up smb on my WHS first before I wrote this NFS guide, and one of the steps for smb was setting up the Guest Account (so it was already working when I wrote the NFS guide). I do have on my to do list to update this guide for the Guest Account

David July 4, 2011 at 6:01 pm

Hey there, this is a great guide for WHS v1 and I used it with great success, thank you! However I know have WHS 2011, is there any chance of publishing a new guide for the new version of WHS?

Damian July 5, 2011 at 2:17 pm

I believe doing so for WHS 2011 should be a lot more straightforward as it should be similar to setting up for Windows Server 2008. When I have some time I will definitely see if I can set up with my WHS 2011 test rig. I believe the NFS service should already be there, and you just need to install.

David September 26, 2011 at 5:45 am

Thanks Damian,

There is instructions somewhere on the web but they are quite ambiguous.

I would really appreciate any advice you have when you’ve had a chance to test in your test rig.

Thanks, Dave.

Damian September 26, 2011 at 6:21 am

Sorry to hear you haven’t had much luck. I am waiting for some replacement parts for one of my HTPCs and then plan on moving those parts over to do a WHS 2011 test build, will post back here if/when I make some progress.

May be worth posting in the forum here as well as there may already be WHS 2011 users who are using NFS

Ayavric July 5, 2011 at 12:37 am

Попробуй вот так http://vmpress.blogspot.com/2009/07/nfs-windows-server-2008.html
У меня получилось. Проблемы только с настройкой клиента под Линуксом были.

badgerstuta July 7, 2011 at 4:11 pm

Hi – great guide. I’m having a frustrating issue on the last step. I right click on my share folder, go to NFS sharing and tick the allow root access box and press ok (all fine so far). However when I go on to the next step and click the sharing tab, highlight the share this folder box and then press apply I get the following error message “A parent directory of the path has already been shared”. It then resets all of the previous steps explained above. I’m really stumped, can anyone shed any light ?

Thanks in advance

asianjabba August 21, 2011 at 1:17 am

Hi – DAmian
Great guide – i have a quick question. I’ve followed how you set up nfs in WHS but when add nfs onto my dune, it doesn’t seem to find it. I have it set as:
server: nfs://myserver:/Videos (Videos being the folder i shared)
folder: Videos
udp

after i set that, and when i press enter on that icon on the dune screen, it would bring up that little bar on the bottom right but it would just hang. i can’t do anything and i would have to eventually do a hard reset on the dune player. does anybody else have this occurance?

are there any suggestions, am i putting something wrong? or any tips? thanks again for reading and any help is much appreciated.

Damian August 25, 2011 at 11:43 am

Good question. TBH I never tried to connect via NFS on my Dune, I had tested on my PCHs, Xtreamers, etc… and it worked no difference then samba.

I had to do a clean reinstall of WHS a few weeks ago and haven’t added NFS back yet. Not sure off the top of my head what your issue could be, but if I get nfs installed back I will test out on my side.

raghu December 19, 2011 at 3:46 am

just set Server as MyServer.. you dont need to give the full path as there is a separate list for smb/nfs

Sammy August 24, 2011 at 4:14 pm

Hi there, i followed this guide and got NFS working on my WHS. My problem is that I can’t access the shared folder, Videos, with my Apple TV2 running XBMC. I found that that XBMC runs as Mobile with UID 501. How do I revise the two password and group files to include a this mobile 501 user?

thank you

Moustik September 10, 2011 at 3:05 pm

Great Guide, After some errands, I have been able to set-up the NFS server on the WHS, so that all my Macs under Lion can access to the various shared files (smb has been broken since I jumped to lion). The only flaw that I have is about filename with special caracters in it (such as é for example). The MACs can not access theses files and if I create one from the mac, windows can not access it.
I guess it is related to ISO to UTF-8 but I do not know how to tweak the server to manage that. Did someone already faced that ?

Damian September 26, 2011 at 5:33 am

Any luck with this? The only Mac I know is a Big Mac unfortunately, so not much I can provide there.

Pman September 20, 2011 at 7:30 pm

Another great tutorial. thanks for sharing and as always it worked great. (i didnt need it i just wanted to try it out.)

Ducky September 25, 2011 at 6:24 pm

Very nice guide. One question: what is the purpose of the “Guest Sharing” section? That is not needed to get NFS set up on WHS, right?

Damian September 26, 2011 at 5:32 am

I don’t believe it is necessary but a lot of people with connect to their WHS from a device as guest, and without that set up your device won’t connect to the NFS properly.

raghu December 19, 2011 at 3:49 am

I’m having an issue with my guest account in the Security tab. I’ve added this but it disappears everytime I re-start the server, so I need to re-add it in order to make the NFS work. Any ideas on how to prevent this?

Damian December 23, 2011 at 7:25 am
David December 23, 2011 at 8:47 am

Thanks Damian, This is Gold…

I’ll wait till after Christmas and then set it up.

Keith December 30, 2011 at 2:21 pm

This is a great tutorial. Only problem is the password.txt file is no longer available (at least it wasn’t a couple weeks ago when I tried). Any chance for a re-upload?

Mathelo December 31, 2011 at 6:57 am

Keith,

It is a simple text file and the directions are included above for creating it. From the article:

- If you are unable to download the Password.txt and/or Group.txt files you can create easily. Open up notepad and copy/paste the below text:

(for group.txt)

root:x:0:
nmt:x:1001:

(for password.txt)

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/sh
nmt:x:1001:1001:nmt:/nmt:/bin/sh

Damian December 31, 2011 at 2:05 pm

Correct, you can create the text file yourself. The reason why i t is no longer available is because for whatever reason I was notified that it was a DCMA violation and the file had to be taken down (you got me on that one)…

aaronwt February 2, 2012 at 7:44 am

what is the difference between using this method and Hanewin NFS to get NFS on my WHS. I plan on setting up NFS on my WHS soon.

Damian February 2, 2012 at 7:48 am

This method is free (I believe you have to pay for the Hanewin software?). Only other thing I can think of is possible compatibility with other hardware devices that would connect to the WHS via NFS maybe? I have never used Hanewin though so I cannot comment

aaronwt February 5, 2012 at 6:39 pm

Thanks. I just followed your step by step guide and it’s working great.

Eygobar February 5, 2012 at 5:50 am

Just a comment which might aid others;
When you use this excelent and easy to follow guide, and wonder why no files show up on your media player after attempting to connect the NFS Mount, make sure you have ENABLED Guest account on WHS….doh, took me 3 hours to figure out what I had done wrong.

Kristian May 11, 2012 at 10:17 am

I installed NFS almost a year ago and all have been like dancing on roses.
Until today. I got a movie on and wanted to watch it and my player can not access the file.
I log into the console of whs and all is fine. I log in through remote desktop and I see a little bubble “an update has been installed and your computer had to be rebooted”.
Anyone else have this problem? I’d be very happy to get this sorted as I got 600+ movies in my collection on the server.

tols1 June 9, 2012 at 8:18 am

Thanks a lot for the guide. Works like a charm :) Had a bit of trouble setting up the shortcut in the AC Ryan HD Mini. After about 20 attempts I ended up with [server ip address]:/Videos which worked fine. After installing NFS sharing, I now stream 15 Gb files without stuttering, earlier the max size was 8-9 Gb.

Olivier August 10, 2012 at 10:35 am

Thanks Damian for this guide.

I’m trying to download all the files, but I can’t download “Password.txt”. When clicking on the link, I get a “Invalid or Deleted File.” page.

Olivier August 10, 2012 at 10:40 am

Ok, forget it. I just saw the comment about that…

Damian August 10, 2012 at 11:24 am

No problem. I have no idea why but that file was considered property of MS lol

Rod January 18, 2013 at 7:27 pm

Damian, when I select show group maps I have no problem setting up guest under Windows Groups however when I select List UNIX Groups I get the following error: the group file specified has an incorrect format at the following entry root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/sh. any hekp to resolve this would be much appreciated, I have redone the password.text file and confirmed it is the same as in your instructions. Any help would be much appreciated.

Rod January 18, 2013 at 9:10 pm

Never mind. I figured it out. Thanks for the guide!

Steve March 23, 2013 at 8:51 am

Hope this isn’t necro threading.

Have setup on WHSV1.x (latest before 2011).
On xmbc I can see the two shared folders, /films /recorded_tv but no content.
All the content is large (>2GB) is this liable to be the cause given that its a 32bit OS?
I’m thinking that as I can see the folders then I am set up right, but i’m getting a could not connect to server error which implies not.
I have two shared folders as I was concerned about inherited properties of the subfolders and so the /films folder is new and has had content added after sharing. I’ve also set the inherit flag in registry to 1 (as per the readme).
The guest sharing section is a bit odd, but I think i’ve got it right, although not applied at root of shares, just at films and rec_tv.
Thanks for taking time to answer assuming you are still aware of this blog.

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