The ONC3/NFS disk is only for acting as a server. You don't need it to remotely mount.
There's a lot of misinformation about how to use NFS with GNU/Linux out there, and the main ones revolve around interoperability with IRIX.
Make sure you have v3 enabled on the NFS server and depending on your OS youay need to enable UDP connections. Praetor (a user here) recently did a writeup of how to fix it on red hat based operating systems.
If I'm being honest and you have the luxury of changing your operating system the best system to use for NFS sharing with IRIX is Solaris or Illumos. I have a write-up on the wiki about this.
I'm the system admin of this site. Private security technician, licensed locksmith, hack of a c developer and vintage computer enthusiast.
https://contrib.irixnet.org/raion/ -- contributions and pieces that I'm working on currently.
https://codeberg.org/SolusRaion -- Code repos I control
Technical problems should be sent my way.