Using systemd to Automount an NFS Share

This is a reminder for me about how I have mounted my NFS shares.

When creating systemd unit files, you should put them in /etc/systemd/system/ if they are for system-wide us. You can learn more about the loction of unit files here. You can have systemd mount and automount unit files created automatically from fstab too, but I prefer to create the unit files myself.

With my NFS shares I place them under /nfs and not /mnt.

Mount

First I am creating a mount unit file.

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/nfs-share.mount

Unit file contents

[Unit]
Description=Mount /volume/share from storage.example.net using NFS

[Mount]
What=storage.example.net:/volume/share/
Where=/nfs/share
Type=nfs
Options=defaults
TimeoutSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Automount

Next is the automount unit file.

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/nfs-share.automount

Unit file contents

[Unit]
Description=Automount /volume/share from storage.example.net using NFS
ConditionPathExists=/nfs/share

[Automount]
Where=/nfs/sahre
TimeoutIdleSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable

You will need to reload the systemd daemon

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Then you need to enable and start the automount unit. You do not need to enable or start the mount unit.

sudo systemctl enable nfs-share.automount
sudo systemctl start nfs-share.automount

Now when you browse to /nfs/share it will mount on access.