Nfs sharing on linux

How To Mount And Use NFS Shares On Linux Sharing Files Easily Using NSF

Developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984, NFS or Network File Shares is a file system protocol used for accessing files over a network similar to a local storage device.

NFS Shares are powerful and popular as they allow users to share files and directories over a local network and the internet. However, it is better to limit NFS shares to local and trusted networks as files don’t get encrypted on the machines. However, the problem was addressed and fixed on a recent version of the NFS protocol. You may need to set up complex authentication methods such as Kerberos.

This tutorial will walk you through how to set up NFS shares on a Linux system. Let us get started.

Setting up NFS Server

Let us start by setting up the NFS server. This process is fairly simple, with only a few commands:

sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server

Next, create a directory in the local system which will be used as the NFS’ share root directory:

Set the appropriate permissions to the directory:

Next, edit the exports file in /etc/exports and add the following entry

Setting Up An NFS Client

For you to mount NFS Shares on Linux, you will need to install nfs client tools using the command:

Mounting an NFS Filesystem

The process of mounting NFS file shares is very similar to mounting a regular file system in Linux. You can use the command mount. The general syntax is as:

To accomplish this, start by creating a directory to use as the NFS Share’s mount point.

Next, mount the NFS share using the mount command as shown below:

Once completed, you should have access to the remote shares on the server.

Unmounting File shares

Since an NFS share is similar to a file system, you can unmount it with umount command as:

You can use other options with umount command, such as a force to force-unmount the NFS shares.

Conclusion

The above is a simple guide on how to use and mount NFS shares on a Linux system. There is more to NFS than what we have discussed here; feel free to utilize external resources to learn more.

About the author

John Otieno

My name is John and am a fellow geek like you. I am passionate about all things computers from Hardware, Operating systems to Programming. My dream is to share my knowledge with the world and help out fellow geeks. Follow my content by subscribing to LinuxHint mailing list

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How to Setup NFS (Network File System) on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu

NFS (Network File System) is basically developed for sharing of files and folders between Linux/Unix systems by Sun Microsystems in 1980. It allows you to mount your local file systems over a network and remote hosts to interact with them as they are mounted locally on the same system. With the help of NFS, we can set up file sharing between Unix to Linux system and Linux to Unix system.

Benefits of NFS

1. NFS allows local access to remote files.
2. It uses standard client/server architecture for file sharing between all *nix based machines.
3. With NFS it is not necessary that both machines run on the same OS.
4. With the help of NFS we can configure centralized storage solutions.
5. Users get their data irrespective of physical location.
6. No manual refresh needed for new files.
7. Newer version of NFS also supports acl, pseudo root mounts.
8. Can be secured with Firewalls and Kerberos.

NFS Services

Its a System V-launched service. The NFS server package includes three facilities, included in the portmap and nfs-utils packages.

1. portmap : It maps calls made from other machines to the correct RPC service (not required with NFSv4).
2. nfs: It translates remote file sharing requests into requests on the local file system.
3. rpc.mountd: This service is responsible for mounting and unmounting of file systems.

Important Files for NFS Configuration

1. /etc/exports : Its a main configuration file of NFS, all exported files and directories are defined in this file at the NFS Server end.
2. /etc/fstab : To mount a NFS directory on your system across the reboots, we need to make an entry in /etc/fstab.
3. /etc/sysconfig/nfs : Configuration file of NFS to control on which port rpc and other services are listening.

Setup and Configure NFS Mounts on Linux Server

To setup NFS mounts, we’ll be needing at least two Linux/Unix machines. Here in this tutorial, I’ll be using two servers.

1. NFS Server: nfsserver.example.com with IP-192.168.0.100
2. NFS Client : nfsclient.example.com with IP-192.168.0.101

Installing NFS Server and NFS Client

We need to install NFS packages on our NFS Server as well as on NFS Client machine. We can install it via “yum” (Red Hat Linux) and “apt-get” (Debian and Ubuntu) package installers.

[[email protected] ~]# yum install nfs-utils nfs-utils-lib [[email protected] ~]# yum install portmap (not required with NFSv4)

[[email protected] ~]# apt-get install nfs-utils nfs-utils-lib

Now start the services on both machines.

[[email protected] ~]# /etc/init.d/portmap start [[email protected] ~]# /etc/init.d/nfs start [[email protected] ~]# chkconfig --level 35 portmap on [[email protected] ~]# chkconfig --level 35 nfs on

After installing packages and starting services on both the machines, we need to configure both the machines for file sharing.

Setting Up the NFS Server

First we will be configuring the NFS server.

Configure Export directory

For sharing a directory with NFS, we need to make an entry in “/etc/exports” configuration file. Here I’ll be creating a new directory named “nfsshare” in “/” partition to share with client server, you can also share an already existing directory with NFS.

Now we need to make an entry in “/etc/exports” and restart the services to make our directory shareable in the network.

[[email protected] ~]# vi /etc/exports /nfsshare 192.168.0.101(rw,sync,no_root_squash)

In the above example, there is a directory in / partition named “nfsshare” is being shared with client IP “192.168.0.101” with read and write (rw) privilege, you can also use hostname of the client in the place of IP in above example.

NFS Options

Some other options we can use in “/etc/exports” file for file sharing is as follows.

1. ro: With the help of this option we can provide read only access to the shared files i.e client will only be able to read.
2. rw: This option allows the client server to both read and write access within the shared directory.
3. sync: Sync confirms requests to the shared directory only once the changes have been committed.
4. no_subtree_check: This option prevents the subtree checking. When a shared directory is the subdirectory of a larger file system, nfs performs scans of every directory above it, in order to verify its permissions and details. Disabling the subtree check may increase the reliability of NFS, but reduce security.
5. no_root_squash: This phrase allows root to connect to the designated directory.

For more options with “/etc/exports“, you are recommended to read the man pages for export.

Setting Up the NFS Client

After configuring the NFS server, we need to mount that shared directory or partition in the client server.

Mount Shared Directories on NFS Client

Now at the NFS client end, we need to mount that directory in our server to access it locally. To do so, first we need to find out that shares available on the remote server or NFS Server.

[[email protected] ~]# showmount -e 192.168.0.100 Export list for 192.168.0.100: /nfsshare 192.168.0.101

Above command shows that a directory named “nfsshare” is available at “192.168.0.100” to share with your server.

Mount Shared NFS Directory

To mount that shared NFS directory we can use following mount command.

[[email protected] ~]# mount -t nfs 192.168.0.100:/nfsshare /mnt/nfsshare

The above command will mount that shared directory in “/mnt/nfsshare” on the client server. You can verify it following command.

[[email protected] ~]# mount | grep nfs sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw) nfsd on /proc/fs/nfsd type nfsd (rw) 192.168.0.100:/nfsshare on /mnt type nfs (rw,addr=192.168.0.100)

The above mount command mounted the nfs shared directory on to nfs client temporarily, to mount an NFS directory permanently on your system across the reboots, we need to make an entry in “/etc/fstab“.

Add the following new line as shown below.

192.168.0.100:/nfsshare /mnt nfs defaults 0 0

Test the Working of NFS Setup

We can test our NFS server setup by creating a test file on the server end and check its availability at nfs client side or vice-versa.

At the nfsserver end

I have created a new text file named “nfstest.txt’ in that shared directory.

[[email protected] ~]# cat > /nfsshare/nfstest.txt This is a test file to test the working of NFS server setup.

At the nfsclient end

Go to that shared directory in client server and you’ll find that shared file without any manual refresh or service restart.

[[email protected]]# ll /mnt/nfsshare total 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 61 Sep 21 21:44 nfstest.txt [email protected] ~]# cat /mnt/nfsshare/nfstest.txt This is a test file to test the working of NFS server setup.

Removing the NFS Mount

If you want to unmount that shared directory from your server after you are done with the file sharing, you can simply unmount that particular directory with “umount” command. See this example below.

You can see that the mounts were removed by then looking at the filesystem again.

You’ll see that those shared directories are not available any more.

Important commands for NFS

Some more important commands for NFS.

1. showmount -e : Shows the available shares on your local machine
2. showmount -e: Lists the available shares at the remote server
3. showmount -d : Lists all the sub directories
4. exportfs -v : Displays a list of shares files and options on a server
5. exportfs -a : Exports all shares listed in /etc/exports, or given name
6. exportfs -u : Unexports all shares listed in /etc/exports, or given name
7. exportfs -r : Refresh the server’s list after modifying /etc/exports

This is it with NFS mounts for now, this was just a start, I’ll come up with more option and features of NFS in our future articles. Till then, Stay connected with Tecmint.com for more exciting and interesting tutorials in future. Do leave your comments and suggestions below in the comment box.

I am a linux server admin and love to play with Linux and all other distributions of it. I am working as System Engineer with a Web Hosting Company.

Each tutorial at TecMint is created by a team of experienced Linux system administrators so that it meets our high-quality standards.

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128 thoughts on “How to Setup NFS (Network File System) on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu”

Found some missing files in the fedora 33 servers /etc the exports file has to be created, also I cruised thru usr/systemd.conf files, some needed a user added as only root can access some of them. Redhat has removed the “rsh” login while Debian has it, with rsh I can connect eth0 to the dell idrac port, type rsh 192.168.0.? And can log in gives tons of cli commands that the web-based idrac doesn’t seem to have, not sure there’s a difference in formats. Debian for some reason does not include netstat if config and FTP? Also, fedora7 and 8 had rwhod, whois, telnet, FTP, apache web server. The fefora33 server I’m using lacks these old tools and I’m not sure if I’m getting past the firewall other than pinging my idrac on my dell server! Unfortunately, I have to go online to ad nfs files to make it work in the fedora33 server. I noticed you used init.d but redhat and its subsidiary ones all use the system.d in their configuration, so init.d might not work on a redhat/fedora/centos box! Reply

I have one doubt, why he did not add some services to the firewall without adding? it is possible. below are some of the services – nfs-server, rpcbind mounted, can some confirm Reply

I had difficulty getting the server to reboot, the solution for me was to change the /etc/fstab on the nfsclient to the following: nfsserver:/var/nfsshare/work /opt/work nfs defaults,_netdev,x-systemd.after=nfs-server.service 0 0 Reply

This is one of the easiest installation. But this is not as simple as this is mentioned in the blog. Here the consideration is taken when the Firewall is stopped. Which specific ports to be allowed for NFS server to work properly. Only allowing NFS service is firewall is not working. It keeps on giving error of portmapper and something like that. I am doing it on CentOS 7, NFS server does not work independently so allowing NFS port is not making any difference Reply

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