<question id="exports-errors">

          <para>Why does <command>mountd</command> keep telling me it

            <quote>can't change attributes</quote> and that I have a

            <quote>bad exports list</quote> on my FreeBSD NFS

            server?</para>

        </question>

        <answer>

          <para>The most frequent problem is not understanding this

            passage from the &man.exports.5 manual page

            correctly:</para>

          <programlisting>Each line in the file (other than comment lines that begin with a #)

specifies the mount point(s) and export flags within one local server

filesystem for one or more hosts.  A host may be specified only once

for each local filesystem on the server and there may be only one

default entry for each server filesystem that applies to all other

hosts.</programlisting>

          <para>This is made more clear by an example of a common

            mistake. If everything above <filename>/usr</filename> is

            part of one filesystem (there are no mounts above

            <filename>/usr</filename>) the following exports list is

            not valid:</para>

          <programlisting>/usr/src   client

/usr/ports client</programlisting>

          <para>There are two lines specifying properties for one

            filesystem, <filename>/usr</filename>, exported to the

            same host, <hostid>client</hostid>. The correct format

            is:</para>

          <programlisting>/usr/src /usr/ports  client</programlisting>

          <para>To rephrase the passage from the manual page, the

            properties of one filesystem exported to a given host

            (world-wide exports are treated like another unique host)

            must all occur on one line. And yes, this does cause

            limitiation in how you can export filesystems without ugly

            workarounds, but for most people, this is not an

            issue.</para>

          <para>The following is an example of a valid export list,

            where <filename>/usr</filename> and

            <filename>/exports</filename> are local

            filesystems:</para>

          <programlisting># Export src and ports to client01 and client02, but only

# client01 has root privileges on it

/usr/src /usr/ports -maproot=0    client01

/usr/src /usr/ports               client02

# The "client" machines have root and can mount anywhere

# up /exports. The world can mount /exports/obj read-only 

/exports -alldirs -maproot=0      client01 client02

/exports/obj -ro</programlisting>

        </answer>

      </qandaentry>

      <qandaentry>