HOWTO: NFS Server/Client

[malco2001]

Why NFS?

I simply wanted to experiment with NFS, and couldn't seem to find the documentation here on the forums. I found using NFS just as easy if not easier than using Samba for sharing between a few of my Unix based systems. In order to share a folder it only required a single line in a configuration file under /etc/exports, and a single line under /etc/fstab on the client to mount the share on each client at boot.

I mostly edited and moved things around from these guides to make a more complete single guide to getting this working using Ubuntu.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/ubuntu...nfs-share.html (for client configuration)
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...nfs-mount.html (for mounting using fstab)
<removed dead link>
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...twork-nfs.html (contains more info about NFS)

Install NFS Server Support
at the terminal type
sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap
When configuring portmap do =not= bind loopback. If you do you can either edit /etc/default/portmap by hand or run:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure portmap
sudo /etc/init.d/portmap restart

Editing /etc/exports
the /etc/exports file is used for creating a share on the NFS server

invoke your favorite text editor or
sudo vi /etc/exports

Here are some quick examples of what you could add to your /etc/exports

For Full Read Write Permissions allowing any computer from 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.255

• /files 192.168.1.0/24(rw,no_root_squash,async)

Or for Read Only from a single machine

• /files 192.168.1.2 (ro,async)

save this file and then in a terminal type
sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Also aftter making changes to /etc/exports in a terminal you must type
sudo exportfs -a

Install NFS client support
sudo apt-get install portmap nfs-common

Mounting manually
Example to mount server.mydomain.com:/files to /files. In this example server.mydomain.com is the name of the server containing the nfs share, and files is the name of the share on the nfs server

The mount point /files must first exist on the client machine.
cd /
sudo mkdir files

to mount the share from a terminal type

sudo mount server.mydomain.com:/files /files

Note you may need to restart above services:
sudo /etc/init.d/portmap restart
sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-common restart

Mounting at boot using /etc/fstab
Invoke the text editor using your favorite editor, or
gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

In this example my /etc/fstab was like this:

• server.mydomain.com:/files /files nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr

You could copy and paste my line, and change “servername.mydomain.com:/files”, and “/files” to match your server name:share name, and the name of the mount point you created.
It is a good idea to test this before a reboot in case a mistake was made.
type
mount /files
in a terminal, and the mount point /files will be mounted from the server.

[Jose Catre-Vandis]

Thanks, this howto made simple what the wiki howto makes look difficult. I can now dispense with the vagaries of samba

[InspirationDate]

Thanks for the howto. The only problem I ran into was with this line:

Originally Posted by malco2001 save this file and then in a terminal type /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

it gave me a bunch of errors until I sudo'd it.

sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

[cgreulich]

Thank you for writing this!!! I have been sifting through posts for two days trying to figure out how to share files between my two ubuntu(dapper) pc's. Your instructions worked the first time I tried them.

[malco2001]

Originally Posted by malco2001 save this file and then in a terminal type /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Posted by InspirationDate it gave me a bunch of errors until I sudo'd it.

i edited my post to fix that. i'm glad it worked so well for all of you.

[quad3d@work]

Had some serious speed problem with Samba. Setting up NFS from your guide works well! Now I'm doing 30-40Mb (gigabit network) per sec instead of 1-3Mb with Samba. Thanks!

[jabb]

thanks for this guide really cool

however I have a bunch of Disks mountet on the server i home dir
and I wanted to just mount the home dir in the client.
I did'nt work. I could not see the subdirs for some reason.

thoug if in export I make explicit what dirs to export where the dirs are disks, then it worked fine after restarting the service and making new mount points of course.

though if someone can explain how to just mount the home of the server that would be great. I did everything as the guide instructed.

[mike3k]

If you're connection to a Linux NFS server from Mac OS X, you need to specify 'insecure' in your exports and map the user IDs since Macs use uid 501 for the first regular user. For my /etc/exports I use:

/home 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0(rw,async,insecure,all_squash,anonuid =1000,anongid=1000)

[p388l3s]

Thankyou malco2001,

Very precise and to the point, gained access to my freenas box in mere moments once i read this post, now to make sunbird share it's calendar file for both my ubuntu and windows boxes.

Many thanks

Pebbles

[probablydrew]

thanks, I found this helpful, and quite easy to config with the built in nfs module in webmin. I also experienced a speed increase of about double over samba.