Difficulties with NFS support - missing features for /etc/groups and hosts?

[Kamikazejs]

Hello,

 

Currently using 6.6.1 (although I may be downgrading due to unrelated shfs/fuse bugs causing nfsserver crashes when using NFS). I've been using Unraid for a little while to replace my own custom home NAS using a popular linux distro and BTRFS over a handful of drives.  I'm having some difficulty understanding certain decisions with Unraid and how best to work around them with regards to NFS.

 

Specifically:

 

1) /etc/hosts isn't preserved across reboots, but this is often critical to make NFS exports available to linux VMs (or other linux boxes I have on my LAN).

2) /etc/group isn't preserved across reboots.  While not _critical_ is is extremely useful for the common unix security models (UGO) that I rely upon for simple user access control to linux VMs and hosts.

3) /etc/passwd used to require modification after reboots to change the primary group, but at some point that stopped being required and users are staying in the GIDs I previously gave them (1001, 1002, etc.), whereas I used to have to run usermod -g commands.

 

Basically, after every reboot I have to append the needed entries to /etc/group & hosts, run exportfs -a, and only then can my NFS clients attach properly.

 

Am I missing some interface somewhere or doing something wrong?  I know I'm not the only one using unraid for NFS.  It _feels_ like the NFS support is somewhat of an afterthought given that.

 

If we need to add this functionality, then we should also be able to modify primary group information for users.

 

Thanks,

Eric

[itimpi]

The /etc location is only in RAM which will be why it is not being preserved across boots.   You need to have these files stored on the USB flash drive and restored on each boot.   I believe that UnRAID is already doing this for /etc/passwd and /etc/groups (but you have to copy one you manually changed to the USB drive), but probably not /etc/hosts.

[Kamikazejs]

Any other suggestions?  It seems ridiculous to replace /etc/hosts and /etc/group on every reboot as I'm doing now.

 

I can't be the first person to run into this...  this is breaking such a simple, basic feature of linux/unix that I may have to explore a different solution if I can't find a more elegant workaround or fix.  Ideally, there should be support for hosts and groups in the unraid gui.

[Squid]

22 minutes ago, Kamikazejs said:

Any other suggestions?  It seems ridiculous to replace /etc/hosts and /etc/group on every reboot as I'm doing now.

Probably.  But you can automate it either through the "go" file or via the user scripts plugin.  Not much other choice at the moment.

[BRiT]

It would be nice if the built in /etc/rc.d/rc.M and the UI event system was modified to support persistent groups and hosts.

[Kamikazejs]

23 hours ago, BRiT said:

It would be nice if the built in /etc/rc.d/rc.M and the UI event system was modified to support persistent groups and hosts.

+1000