What is the proper configuration for mounting Synology shares over NFS, without case-sensitivity?
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I've ran out of disk space (heh). So, I cleverly mounted some shares via NFS (which is blindingly fast compared to any other type of file sharing, thanks to the advanced support macOS has for NFSv4, built into the kernel itself). For trivial things (music, video...) this works nicely.
The issue I've got is simply that some applications I have (games!!), to run from a NFS share, they need it to be mounted as **case-insensitive**, but NFS, by default, mounts filesystems as **case-sensitive**:
On Synology (DS218play, DSM 7.2.1-69057 Update 3) everything is (supposedly) handled via the Shared Folder option in the Control Panel:
which, in turn, produces the following:



$ sudo cat /etc/exports
/volume1/movies 10.1.1.0/24(rw,async,no_wdelay,crossmnt,insecure,all_squash,insecure_locks,sec=sys,anonuid=1024,anongid=100)
/volume1/music 10.1.1.0/24(rw,async,no_wdelay,crossmnt,insecure,all_squash,insecure_locks,sec=sys,anonuid=1024,anongid=100)
... etc for other shares...
(10.1.1.0/24
being in this example the IP range for my home network)
On the macOS (Big Sur), I mount the NFS shares via the Finder, using **Go** > **Connect to Server...** which, in my experience, is the best way to get them to work (believe me, I've tried many alternatives explained thoroughly on several places, including here on Ask Different). I make them persistent simply by dragging them on the **Login Items** tab for my user under **Users & Accounts**.
The (working) result shows up as:
$ mount
synology.local:/volume1/music on /Volumes/music (nfs, nodev, nosuid, mounted by gwyneth)
synology.local:/volume1/movies on /Volumes/movies (nfs, nodev, nosuid, mounted by gwyneth)
... etc for other shares...
So far, so good, and this essentially works for everything that is fine with case-sensitive mounts — the default in the Unix world, after all.
But now I wish to tweak the parameters to get those mounts to be case-*in*sensitive!
Mind you, I'm fine in having such tweaks either on the side of macOS or on the Synology; even a "temporary" solution (one that doesn't survive reboots, upgrades, etc.) would go a long, long way to get things running.
But I have taken a look at similar questions such as:
* https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/124118/does-mavericks-have-a-gui-for-nfs-mounts-as-in-previous-os-x-versions
* https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/19466/unable-to-mount-an-nfs-share
or even
* https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/1/post/140201 (no solution to a similar issue regarding case sensitivity)
* https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/how-to-manually-mount-nfs-on-macos-monterey.104377/ (for TrueNAS running Ubuntu, _not_ Synology)
* https://github.com/owncloud/core/issues/25372 (again, different platform, this time ownCloud — the issue was acknowledged to exist, but it apparently has no solution)
One wild idea seems to sugggest that the NFS filesystem ought to be mounted as a _sparse_ disk image (just like Time Machine does!):
- https://wildcardcorp.com/blogs/making-vagrant-virtualbox-nfs-less-painful-with-sparse-disk-images
This _seems_ to do the trick, but, alas, seems to be a rather complex way to deal with the whole issue; also, I fear that the potential extra overhead from the sparse filesystem will balance out the benefits of using super-fast NFSv4.
Samba shares obviously can be mounted either way, but [I really want to use NFS](https://www.bdrsuite.com/blog/nfs-vs-smb-whats-the-difference/) :
* https://superuser.com/questions/713798/case-insensitivity-issues-on-a-nas-connected-to-from-both-linux-and-windows-ma
Similar (not exactly the _same_) issues with case-sensitivity vs. case-insensitive under Windows seem to have been fixed [only last year](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools/issues/1994) **by simply using a special parameter to toggle case sensitivity**.
Cool! Is there a similar parameter for macOS?
(Or Synology DSM?)
_Note: I'm aware I might be on a wild-goose chase here; nevertheless, who knows, maybe there **is** a way to override the case-sensivity at some kernel or networking layer, it's just that most people are unwilling to do it, thus the lack of proper replies to this issue._
Asked by Gwyneth Llewelyn
(369 rep)
Dec 2, 2023, 11:51 AM
Last activity: Dec 4, 2023, 04:52 PM
Last activity: Dec 4, 2023, 04:52 PM