How to Mount a Network File Storage Share

To mount a Network File Storage share to a Droplet, connect to your Droplet using SSH or the Droplet console), then either use the mount command for a temporary mount, or edit the fstab file to mount the share permanently.

Check for NFS Support

Log in to your Droplet, then check if NFS client support is already installed by looking for the mount.nfs command:

which mount.nfs

If which returns a path to mount.nfs (for example: /usr/sbin/mount.nfs), proceed to Create the Mount Target. Otherwise, follow the installation instructions in the next section.

Install Packages

On Ubuntu and Debian, update the package list:

sudo apt update

Then install the nfs-common package:

sudo apt install nfs-common

For distributions that use DNF for package management, such as Fedora, Rocky Linux, and Alpine Linux, install the nfs-utils package:

sudo dnf install nfs-utils

Create the Mount Target

Create a directory to mount the NFS share to:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/example-nfs-share

This can be any directory, it does not need to match the share name or path, and it doesn’t not need to be in the /mnt directory.

Mount the Share Temporarily

Use the mount command to mount the NFS share temporarily. This method does not persist across reboots. To make a persistent mount, read the next section, Mount the Share Permanently.

sudo mount -t nfs <your_share_ip:and_path> /mnt/example-nfs-share

Replace <your_share_ip:and_path> with the mount information shown in the control panel, and replace /mnt/example-nfs-share with the directory created in Create the Mount Target.

The share is now mounted to the specified directory.

Mount the Share Permanently

To mount the share permanently, first update the /etc/fstab file with the mount information. Open /etc/fstab with your preferred text editor:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add the following line to the end of the file, replacing <your_share_ip:and_path> with the mount information shown in the control panel, and replace /mnt/example-nfs-share with the directory created in Create the Mount Target:

<your_share_ip:and_path> /mnt/example-nfs-share nfs _netdev,nofail,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=600,vers=4.2 0 0

Save and close the file.

Use the mount command with the -a option to mount all the shares listed in /etc/fstab.

sudo mount -a

The share is now mounted to the specified directory.

Verify the Mount

To verify that the share is mounted, use the df command to show the mounted filesystems:

df -hT

This command displays the filesystems that are currently mounted, including their types (-T) and human-readable sizes (-h). Look for nfs4 in the Type column:

Filesystem                                               Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
. . .
10.128.0.2:/2559851/363bdd82-968a-4aa6-8234-b6edf725c72a nfs4       50G     0   50G   0% /mnt/example-nfs-share