38
votes

I have Windows 7 Professional, but the NFS Client for Windows is only included in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions.

I would like to connect some Windows machines to our NFS server so I can drop the Samba Server we are currently using.

Are there any free NFS clients for Windows 7?

I know there are some tools like ProNFS and axeNFS but they are not free.

4
  • 1
    i need that too. but not for production.
    – risyasin
    Oct 12, 2010 at 8:34
  • 2
    Its called market segmentation, companies suck when they do it but hey can't get anything for free they say. I don't know why you want to get rid of the middle system though. If it works it works. If its for a job then the person should just upgrade, else if its personal why not setup a samba server instead of an nfs one?
    – PHGamer
    Oct 13, 2010 at 6:20
  • 4
    If you have a production need for it, shouldn't you pay for it? If you ever need support you'll definitely want a company that you can call.
    – Chris S
    Nov 3, 2010 at 12:41
  • Windows NFS client does not support utf8 filenames. So it is crippled. You need a 3rd party NFS client for sure.
    – Chameleon
    Aug 31, 2019 at 17:08

6 Answers 6

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18
votes

Check this open source project:

Nekodrive
https://github.com/nekoni/nekodrive

The target of this project is to implement NFS (Network File System v2/v3/v4.1) over the Dokan user file system for windows. This let you mount very easily an NFS export as a local windows drive. You don't need any NFS windows client to access the NFS remote export, you can just use microsoft explorer. The current version doesn't support NFS v4.1 yet.

3
  • Have anybody been able to install this on Vista Home 32bit version? If yes, how?
    – Soren
    Aug 18, 2011 at 18:28
  • 2
    nekodrive may work for some people but overall it's just buggy at best. because dokan, which it's based on, is also full of bugs.
    – Morg.
    Sep 5, 2012 at 11:58
  • It's also slow as heck
    – Dakusan
    Aug 31, 2018 at 16:46
10
votes

As long as I understand the question, you should be able to use Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX. You can get them here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=274

Informative Edit: Download in link is no longer available. 2017-Nov-05

8
  • 1
    +1 to this. Have used in many servers with good performance. A little tricky to configure.
    – Carlos Garcia
    Dec 21, 2010 at 12:38
  • 1
    +1 also. It should be downloadable from microsoft.com
    – petrus
    Dec 31, 2010 at 6:12
  • 12
    Its not being supported anymore on Windows XP/2003+ The new services are only included on the Enterprise or Ultimate editions of Windows, which i don't have.
    – Niels van Reijmersdal
    Jan 15, 2011 at 22:26
  • 2
    Unfortunately they are no longer supported.
    – Konrad Gajewski
    Jan 9, 2016 at 13:26
  • 2
    And the link is broken.
    – P.Péter
    Feb 19, 2016 at 15:21
6
votes

As only a last resort I suppose it would be possible to install a linux in a Virtualization environment hosted by the Windows workstation, ie. Virtualbox- which would then provide a shared storage that the guest would have mounted as an NFS volume.

I imagine it would help considerably to have a seperate network interface for the guest to mount the share through.

In other words:

  1. Install Virtualbox to Windows desktop.

  2. Install TinyCore to Virtualbox.

  3. Configure TinyCore's environment to include a shared storage directory.

  4. Install nfs-common to TinyCore.

  5. Mount desired NFS share from TinyCore.

6a. Either point the Virtualbox share to where TinyCore mounts the NFS share to reach it from the Windows host,

or

6b. Mount the NFS mount to the directory Virtualbox is providing to the Windows host.

As I said, last resort.

5
votes

There's an NFS 4.1 Windows client open source project from UMichigan, but you have to build it yourself and I suspect it would need some testing before deployment in a production environment.

3
votes

I'd be hesitant of running one that isn't Microsoft's or a very well tested solution - especially for any "serious" sharing (beyond simple file copy).

Realize NFS is a very powerful network protocol, more so than most people use it for. For example storing virtual machine images on NFS works fine, survives a server outage (regardless of length) without losing data, etc.

This covers why it's not "easy" - http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2006-10/msg01074.html

A better question mayb e why not just use samba on the nfs server to expose the shares via smb? I ask because you make it sound like the two servers are unrelated. Samba should be fairly easy to support on the same machine.

2
votes

I tried the Win7 NFS client and it wasnt that great. So dont be too quick to drop your samba server, even if you find a client.

I think cygwin has a NFS client and server now. However the client is just the cusp of the problem. There's also aligning the unix permissions with the windows ones which is non-trivial.

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