SHOWMOUNT(8)

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💅 SHOWMOUNT(8) — the showmount girlies' guide (System Manager's Manual, section 8)

okay so bestie, welcome to showmount, the little tool that lets you peek at an NFS server's whole vibe. ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

showmount — show mount information for an NFS server

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

showmount [ -adehv ] [ --all ] [ --directories ] [ --exports ]
[ --help ] [ --version ] [ host ]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so showmount goes and queries the mount daemon on a remote host to find out what's going on with the state of the NFS server on that machine. 🫶

if you run it with no options at all? it just lists the set of clients who are mounting from that host. that's it, that's the tea.

and here's the little detail that matters: the output from showmount is designed to appear as though it were processed through sort -u. so like... it's sorted and deduped, no cap. 🔥

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -a or --all — lists both the client hostname or IP address and the mounted directory, in host:dir format. 💅 but bestie, this info should not be considered reliable. see the notes on rmtab in rpc.mountd(8) — iykyk.
  • -d or --directories — lists only the directories mounted by some client. just the dirs, nothing else. 🎀
  • -e or --exports — shows the NFS server's export list. the full menu, basically. 🌈
  • -h or --help — gives you a short help summary. your little emergency cheat sheet. 🧚
  • -v or --version — reports the current version number of the program. ⭐
  • --no-headers — suppresses the descriptive headings from the output. sometimes you just want the raw data, no commentary. 🙈

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

rpc.mountd(8), rpc.nfsd(8)

💀 BUGS 💀

okay so this is the part where we get real, because the accuracy here is... it's giving situational. 😭

  • The completeness and accuracy of the information that showmount displays varies according to the NFS server's implementation. so basically, your mileage is gonna vary depending on who's serving.
  • Because showmount sorts and uniqs the output, it is impossible to determine from the output whether a client is mounting the same directory more than once. so if someone's double-mounting? you literally cannot tell from this. the dedupe ate the evidence. 💀
  • showmount works by contacting the server's MNT service directly. NFSv4-only servers have no need to advertise their exported root filehandles via this method, and may not expose their MNT service to clients. so if you're on a v4-only setup and getting nothing back, that's not you being bad at computers — that's just the architecture, bestie. 🙈
fr fr, don't @ showmount for the gaps. it's doing its best with what the server decides to hand over.

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Rick Sladkey <jrs@world.std.com>

and that's the whole page, angel 💖 this manual page came from the System Manager's Manual, dated 6 October 1993, and it's filed under SHOWMOUNT(8). iconic since '93, periodt. 🫶✨

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