Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: What versions of Windows are supported?

A1: Windows NT 4.0, 2000, XP (Home, Professional), Vista, and Server 2003.

Q2: Sometimes my NFS clients get stale NFS file handle error messages. Why is that?

A2: Stale NFS file handle errors will occur on an NFS client if the NFS server is restarted while the client has an export mounted. The NFS server maintains file handle information when it is running and that information is lost when the server stops. For best results, ensure that all clients have unmounted NFS exports before restarting the NFS server.

Q3: Why do I get no response from the NFS server?

A3: If you are using firewalls on Windows or any of the clients, their configuration must be adjusted to allow various ports through to the server and clients.

NFS works by using several subprocesses to handle various aspects of NFS operation. These subprocesses are called portmapper, mountd, and nfsd. Each of these subprocesses uses one TCP port and one UDP port to listen for requests. All but mountd have a standard port number that they use. portmapper uses port 111. nfsd uses port 2049. mountd, however, uses an arbitrary port number that the operating system assigns. This number will likely be different every time Allegro NFS initializes. This can be a problem if you want to do a one-time configuration of your firewall to allow NFS to work. To help with this problem, Allegro NFS allows you to configure mountd so that it always uses the same port number. You can specify the port number by starting the Allegro NFS configuration program, clicking on the "Global" tab, clicking on the "User-defined" radio button, and supplying the port number of your choice. Port 5000 is suggested by the default but you can use any legal, unused port number. Keep in mind that if you use a port number that is being used by some other program, Allegro NFS will fail to initialize correctly and NFS operations will not work. If this happens, try a different port number and restart Allegro NFS.

Here are the ports which must have access through your firewall:

• UDP and TCP port 111 (for portmapper protocol)
• UDP and TCP port 2049 (for NFS protocol)
• Your chosen UDP and TCP port for mountd
  Specification of the mountd port requires Allegro NFS Server version 4.3 or later.

Q4: Are symbolic links supported?

A4: Currently there is no support for symbolic links in Allegro NFS server. Microsoft Windows filesystems (FAT and NTFS) have no concept of a symbolic link. NTFS has a junction point concept which is close.. but it only works for directories. Shortcut files are also similar... and it is possible that we could modify Allegro NFS server to use them to simulate symbolic links but there are currently no plans to do so.

Q5: Is chmod supported?

A5: chmod is not supported. chmod requests are simply ignored by Allegro NFS. This was a specific design decision to avoid confusing problems that can be caused when the chmod'd files are subsequently accessed on the Windows side. The execute bit is simulated based on filename extension. Files with filename extension exe, bat, and com automatically have the 'x' bit set. If you need the execute bit set, you can make Allegro NFS enable the execute bit on every file, which may suit your needs. You can do this by editing the "set mode bits" setting for the export using the configuration utility. If you use a value of '111', that will set the execute bit for all files.

Q6: When starting Allegro NFS I get 'Error: portmap_set failed'. What's wrong?

A6: This error indicates that you likely have another vendor's NFS product installed and it is causing a conflict when Allegro NFS attempts to set up a portmapper at the same port. The solution is verify that other NFS server products are completely uninstalled, reboot, and attempt to start Allegro NFS again. In particular, customers have noted that Microsoft Services for UNIX includes a portmapper daemon. Uninstalling or disabling this process has been known to resolve this issue.