NFSv4 on the synology isn't complete NFSv4 until you do some special configuration / 2017-11-10

This solution fails at the moment I start using rsync to sync directories to the Synology. Update when I find out where that goes wrong.

I am now using a synology for storage in the home network. Linux clients use NFS to access the Synology, and nowadays the default NFS version is version 4, which does things quite differently from version 3. NFS version 4 is supposed to use user names with NFS domain names and rpc.idmapd instead of numeric user and group IDs.

After serious debugging I found out NFSv4 with the synology doesn't use names as I expected. I kept looking at nfs client settings but eventually I used tcpdump, wireshark and tshark to find out owner names aren't used at all. Numerical UIDs are used as text in the NFSv4 answers, even for files that have an owner that is known in the synology. As if the nfs4_disable_idmapping=0 is never set for the NFS server.

I confirmed this with capturing the NFS traffic with tcpdump and analyzing the pcap files with wireshark and tshark. I indeed see:

                        reco_attr: Owner (36)
                            fattr4_owner: 1026
                                length: 4
                                contents: 1026

A lot of google searching confirms this, including anyone have nfsv4 actually working? - Synology Forum. The next step is to adjust the idmapping in the running kernel on the synology, using:

# echo N > /sys/module/nfsd/parameters/nfs4_disable_idmapping

Now I indeed see the right strings in the NFSv4 traffic, but the idmapd on the client doesn't translate for some reason. Fixing the /etc/idmapd.conf file helped.

The next step is to make this change permanent on the synology. Adding a file /etc/modules.local.conf with

module_nfsd_args="nfs4_disable_idmapping=0"

does the trick. This I learned from reading the startup file /etc/rc.subr which loads the kernel modules.

And now I see the right data in the NFS traffic:

                        reco_attr: Owner (36)
                            fattr4_owner: koos@idefix.net
                                length: 15
                                contents: koos@idefix.net

And the user mapping works. On an older system I have UID 501, on the synology I have UID 1026 and on a new system I have UID 1000, and I'm owner of the files everywhere.