NAS Access

Phase 7

Prerequisite: NixOS

Now that your NixOS VM exists, the next step is giving it access to your storage.

If you set up TrueNAS earlier, this is where everything starts to come together: your apps can stay in one VM while their data lives on the NAS.

There are two common ways to do that:

SMB: easiest to understand, especially if Windows computers also use the same shares
NFS: often preferred for Linux-to-Linux access and cleaner permissions behavior

For this guide, I recommend SMB first because it is easier to reason about when you also want desktop access to the same shares.

Plan Your Shares

Before mounting anything in NixOS, decide what top-level shares or datasets you actually want to expose.

A practical layout looks something like this:

media
photos
documents
backups

On the NixOS side, we will mount those under:

/mnt/nas/media
/mnt/nas/photos
/mnt/nas/documents
/mnt/nas/backups

If you used different share names in TrueNAS, that is fine. Just stay consistent.

Create a Dedicated SMB User in TrueNAS

Before touching NixOS, create a user in TrueNAS specifically for SMB access.

Do not use the main administrator account for routine share mounts from your app host.

Give that user access only to the datasets and shares it actually needs.

This keeps the permissions model simpler and reduces the blast radius if credentials are ever exposed.

Create the Mount Points in NixOS

On the NixOS VM:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/nas/media
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/nas/photos
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/nas/documents
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/nas/backups

Store SMB Credentials Outside Your Nix Config

You do not want to hard-code SMB usernames and passwords directly into configuration.nix, especially if you keep that file in Git later.

Instead, create a root-only credentials file:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/samba
sudo nano /etc/samba/truenas.cred

Example contents:

username=truenas-smb
password=YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE

Then lock down the permissions:

sudo chmod 600 /etc/samba/truenas.cred

Add SMB Mounts to `configuration.nix`

Open your NixOS configuration:

sudo nano /etc/nixos/configuration.nix

Add the following, adjusting the IP address, share names, and UID/GID to match your setup:

{
  boot.supportedFilesystems = [ "cifs" ];

  fileSystems."/mnt/nas/media" = {
    device = "//10.0.0.109/media";
    fsType = "cifs";
    options = [
      "credentials=/etc/samba/truenas.cred"
      "uid=1000"
      "gid=1000"
      "file_mode=0775"
      "dir_mode=0775"
      "x-systemd.automount"
      "noauto"
      "nofail"
      "_netdev"
    ];
  };

  fileSystems."/mnt/nas/photos" = {
    device = "//10.0.0.109/photos";
    fsType = "cifs";
    options = [
      "credentials=/etc/samba/truenas.cred"
      "uid=1000"
      "gid=1000"
      "file_mode=0775"
      "dir_mode=0775"
      "x-systemd.automount"
      "noauto"
      "nofail"
      "_netdev"
    ];
  };

  fileSystems."/mnt/nas/documents" = {
    device = "//10.0.0.109/documents";
    fsType = "cifs";
    options = [
      "credentials=/etc/samba/truenas.cred"
      "uid=1000"
      "gid=1000"
      "file_mode=0770"
      "dir_mode=0770"
      "x-systemd.automount"
      "noauto"
      "nofail"
      "_netdev"
    ];
  };

  fileSystems."/mnt/nas/backups" = {
    device = "//10.0.0.109/backups";
    fsType = "cifs";
    options = [
      "credentials=/etc/samba/truenas.cred"
      "uid=1000"
      "gid=1000"
      "file_mode=0770"
      "dir_mode=0770"
      "x-systemd.automount"
      "noauto"
      "nofail"
      "_netdev"
    ];
  };
}

Then apply the configuration:

sudo nixos-rebuild switch

The x-systemd.automount option makes the shares mount on demand instead of blocking boot if the NAS is temporarily unavailable.

Verify the Mounts

Touch each path once so systemd mounts it:

ls /mnt/nas/media
ls /mnt/nas/photos
ls /mnt/nas/documents
ls /mnt/nas/backups

Then confirm they are mounted:

mount | grep /mnt/nas

If something does not mount:

Confirm the TrueNAS IP address is correct
Confirm the SMB share name matches exactly
Confirm the user has permission to the dataset and share
Check logs with journalctl -xe

What About NFS?

You can absolutely use NFS instead if you prefer.

That is often a good choice when:

only Linux systems need access
you want cleaner Unix-style permissions
you are comfortable managing exports on the TrueNAS side

If you go that route, add boot.supportedFilesystems = [ "nfs" ]; and use fsType = "nfs" with the appropriate export path.

For many home setups, though, SMB is perfectly fine and much easier to share across mixed devices.

If You Skipped TrueNAS

If you do not have a NAS yet, you can still continue with the rest of the guide.

In that case:

store container data locally on the NixOS VM for now
skip the NAS mount configuration
come back to this page later once you add TrueNAS or another storage server

Next Steps

Next, we will set up secure remote access so you can reach your self-hosted services from outside your home without exposing everything directly to the public internet.

Proceed to Tailscale.

Last updated: March 2026

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