Connecting multiple Mac Flames (2026)

Sysadmins Networking
1

I’ve been trying to connect 2 Flames (2026), both on macOS and I’m really hitting a wall. We’ve followed the guide but still no success.

The only thing I’ve changed from the guide was the /etc/exports lines. Instead of a line for projects and one for media, I had to use just one that stops at mnt.

/System/Volumes/Data/mnt/hostname /mnt/hostname -network 192.168.0.0 -mask 255.255.255.0 (hostname obviously being replaced with the local hostname)

This was the only way to get showmount -e hostname to actually show the exports.

No matter what we do, we can’t seem to access /mnt/other_host. Either permission denied or no such file or folder (despite seeing the folder).

Has anyone else successfully been able to get two macs to speak to each other on macOS 15 and 2026? Would love some guidance if anyone has any. I feel like there’s something silly I’m missing. Also no loving how difficult this seems to be on a Mac. With Linux this would be so easy!

Many thanks.

2

I am not the expert here but I will share my notes that got me up and running with 4 Mac machines able to see and work with each other’s projects.

– (Assuming you have no ActiveDirectory type setup) All machines need the exact same user / users. The name, UID and group have to be the same on all machines.

– All machines need to share their storage in /etc/exports. For example my macs all have:

/Volumes/ssdname/ssdname_flame_projects
and the etc/exports looks like:

/opt/Autodesk -maproot=root
/Volumes/ssdname/ssdname_flame_projects -mapall=nobody -network 10.0.0.0 -mask 255.255.255.0

– Each machine needs to mount the other machine’s projects in /etc/fstab. For example the machine called flame1 needs:
10.0.0.150:/Volumes/flame2/flame2_flame_projects /Volumes/flame2/flame2_flame_projects nfs resvport
10.0.0.151:/Volumes/flame3/flame3_flame_projects /Volumes/flame3/flame3_flame_projects nfs resvport
10.0.0.152:/Volumes/flame4/flame4_flame_projects /Volumes/flame4/flame4_flame_projects nfs resvport

with the fstab set up, make directories on each machine that match and then:

sudo automount -vc

Experts here can blow me up. I figure this stuff out with trial and error.

3 Likes
3

Thanks @bryanb. I suspect it’s the whole userid issue. This is all very ad-hoc as it’s a temporary thing but I can appreciate now how having an AD setup is essential.

4

Changing User Name / UID / Group in Mac Terminal:

Only change the UID from another (admin) account. Don’t change the UID of the user you are logged in to.

– See all used UIDs:

~ % dscl . -list /Users UniqueID

– Get the username / UID / Group:

~ % id USERNAME

– Change the user’s UID:

~ % sudo dscl . -change /Users/USERNAME UniqueID OLDUID NEWUID

– Change the user’s group:

~ % sudo dscl . -change /Users/USERNAME PrimaryGroupID OLDGID NEWGID

Fix file ownership (critical!)

Right now, all the user’s files on disk are still owned by the old UID/GID. You want them to match the new ones:

~ % sudo chown -R NEWUID:NEWGID /Users/USERNAME

Clean up stray files owned by the old UID

Find and change any other files owned by the old UID/GID:

~ % sudo find /Users -uid OLDUID -print

Change /Users here to anywhere you might have stray files. If you see anything that should belong to the user, fix it with chown:

~ % sudo chown NEWUID:NEWGID /path/to/file

Reboot and login to the user to check it out.

2 Likes
5

I eventually got it working at home with my mac portable and linux box. Here’s what I’ve got going on the Mac side. I changed the machine names to Mac and Linux for readability:

cat /etc/synthetic.conf 
mnt	System/Volumes/Data/mnt

cat /etc/exports
#2025
/opt/Autodesk
/Volumes/raid/AutodeskMediaStorage -network 192.168.86.0 -mask 255.255.255.0

#2026
/System/Volumes/Data/mnt/mac/projects /mnt/mac/projects -network 192.168.86.0 -mask 255.255.255.0
/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/raid/FlameMedia /mnt/mac/media -network 192.168.86.0 -mask 255.255.255.0

cat /etc/auto_master 
#
# Automounter master map
#
+auto_master		# Use directory service
#/net			-hosts		-nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home			auto_home	-nobrowse,hidefromfinder
/Network/Servers	-fstab
/-			auto.mnt	-nobrowse,resvport
/hosts			-hosts		-nobrowse,resvport


cat /etc/auto.mnt 
/mnt/linux/projects 192.168.86.10:/mnt/linux/projects
/mnt/linux/media    192.168.86.10:/mnt/linux/media

ls -lag /mnt/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x   4 wheel  128 Nov 10 13:24 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 21 wheel  672 Nov 20 19:54 ..
dr-xr-xr-x   4 wheel  128 Nov 10 13:24 linux
drwxr-xr-x   4 wheel  128 Nov 10 12:33 mac

ls -lag /mnt/mac 
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  4 wheel  128 Nov 10 12:33 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 wheel  128 Nov 10 13:24 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 wheel   24 Nov 10 12:32 media -> /Volumes/raid/FlameMedia
drwxrwxrwx  6 wheel  192 Nov 14 10:48 projects

I don’t fuck with the fstab–it’s autofs for everything. The users are completely different and there’s no AD for user or group management. I haven’t seen a permission problem. It is important to open them when creating the various directories that link. There’s also this gem on the linux side:

cat /etc/crontab 
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root

# For details see man 4 crontabs

# Example of job definition:
# .---------------- minute (0 - 59)
# |  .------------- hour (0 - 23)
# |  |  .---------- day of month (1 - 31)
# |  |  |  .------- month (1 - 12) OR jan,feb,mar,apr ...
# |  |  |  |  .---- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0 or 7) OR sun,mon,tue,wed,thu,fri,sat
# |  |  |  |  |
# *  *  *  *  * user-name  command to be executed

*/4 * * * * root /bin/stat /mnt/mac/media /mnt/mac/projects > /dev/null

…to avoid nfs disconnect fever. All that said, it took me a little while to get it going. It wasn’t what it should be, which is to say that it wasn’t easy, despite the fact that I don’t consider myself an idiot in the networking world. Originally I was considering to do the same as you @kyleobley, project metadata and cache on the same raid, but in the end opted to follow the instructions and throw all project metadata in /mnt/projects. My next step is going to be experimenting with linking that data to another location. With this structure it should be easy enough to do but when it wasn’t working at first I just cut back all experimentation.

Hope this helps in some capacity.

4 Likes
macOS NFS
Has anyone tried the "Project Sharing" NFS Exports collaboration method in the 2026 Flame Manual in a mixed Mac and Linux environment?
6

Thank you both greatly. I’ll look more into this come Monday. What I can say is we both have the same UID & GID, albeit with different usernames.

7

out of curiosity.. which version of macOS are you using?

8

Ok, so I managed to get it working in one direction…still troubleshooting the other way. Part of the issue was nfsd not having full disk access on one of the machines.

Weirdly, on the direction that is still not working, I can mount the two folders if I mount them to an arbitrary directory in the users home folder but not at the specific mount point /mnt/hostname/media. I’m guessing it’s some permissions error but I haven’t had time to investigate further.

9

15.6.1 and Rocky 9.3 on the Linux side

10

15.7.2 and rocky 9.5 also work. with FreeIPA.

11

Configuring networking technologies under macOS can fill all your freetime with magic and happiness!

4 Likes
12

Just to add to the joy, I can’t get the “problem” machine to mount media and projects when I do it manually, so we can get it work. For some strange reason automount fails, but only on this one machine. I’ll keep picking away and report back with anything of value.