from the documentation:
I need to check if portmap is running. it is not when i look for it with the PS command.
I checked the software section and the portmap package, while yielding results googling for it for openwrt, is not found as a package.
Would love some help to get sda1 mounted as full accessable network drive.
Using WinSCP, i can access the drive fine at /mnt/sda1 and see its files. I just have a hard time enabling it as network drive.
I think rpcbind is the package that provides "portmap" now.
i see the package rpcbind is already installed.
it also gives the following description:
"be running on the host to be able to make RPC calls on a server on that machine. Rpcbind replaces portmap for NFS v2/v3."
So perhaps the docs need updating as portmap is no longer used?
i have no idea how to proceed now 
I did some work on the wiki page found at https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/nas/nfs.server back when 21.02 was released to have a working NFS server setup documented. I think that information should still apply.
i have seen today that the nfs server works. i simply added /mnt/sda1 in the exports file and that was it, i thought i had to configure more stuff. i didnt know it was working because had no way to verify it besides running the system i did before.
thanks everyone for the assistance!