NFS Naming Service Dependencies

Naming services, such as DNS, NIS, and LDAP, are used by Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance to resolve host names and corresponding IP addresses, user identities, and Analytics statistics. This topic describes NFS naming service dependencies and resulting problems if naming services are not configured for the appliance.

NFS depends on information from each of the naming services in the following table.

Table 3-30 NFS Naming Service Dependencies

Service	Description
DNS	IP address and corresponding host name of NFS clients and servers
NIS/LDAP	User identity number and corresponding user name
NIS/LDAP	Group identity number and corresponding group name
NIS/LDAP	Clients belonging to netgroups

If the appliance is unable to access any DNS network servers or DNS mappings are unpopulated, the following problems can occur:

Filesystem mount failure
Client is denied access to NFS shares after the filesystem has been successfully mounted
Client receives "weak authentication" errors
NFS server unresponsive

User and group lookup failures, using either NFSv3 or NFSv4, as listed in the following table.

NFS Version	Problem	Setting
NFSv3 or NFSv4	Cannot access particular files or directories when the user is a member of 16 or more groups.
NFSv4	Cannot retrieve ownership information (users and groups might be shown as `nobody`).	Set the option `Use NFSv4 numeric id strings`.
NFSv4	Cannot change ownership of files.	On the client, set the equivalent of option `Use NFSv4 numeric id strings`.
NFSv4	Cannot retrieve ACL information.	Set the option `Use NFSv4 numeric id strings`.
NFSv4	Cannot change ACLs, including inability to change entries unrelated to the affected entries.	Set the option `Use NFSv4 numeric id strings`. On the client, set the equivalent of option `Use NFSv4 numeric id strings`.