Connection OS X (10.5) via NFS to Solaris 10

I just discovered an important fact about mounting NFS shares on OS X. (Although, it may be more of a general case.) The NFS server needs to be able to resolve the NFS client's host name. It's not actually NFS in this case, it was actually lockd not being able to resolve the client.

In my setup, my Solaris 10 box is configured as the file, DHCP, and DNS server for my home network. My local domain is "home.local". OS X correctly gets the DNS search domain from the network as I would expect it to, however, the domain "home.local" isn't assumed by the client. This is probably due to design. I suppose if I was binding to NIS it would set the domain. Anyway, I discovered that OS X was sending the FQDN "kryon.local", with ".local" being the default OS X domain. The server could not resolve this host name, since it is not valid on the network.


The OS X domain name is evidenced in the Sharing preferences panel, however it gives no way to directly change the domain. Before 10.5 the domain could be specified in /etc/hostconfig, but that configuration file is no longer in use. So, to resolve my problem with lockd not being able to resolve the client's incorrect hostname, I simply added an entry into /etc/hosts with the incorrect name pointing to the correct address.

As a matter of somewhat related interest, my OS X box is the Internet router for the network, so it also has the server in its hosts file to ensure that it will resolve the Solaris box correctly while connected to the Internet.