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| Info |
|---|
This page documents a configuration of NFS, rather than of Adeptia Suite itself. Adeptia will support File sharing with this configuration, but we cannot guarantee to help you debug problems with NFS. Please be aware that this material is provided for your information only. |
NFS is basically developed for sharing of files and folders between Linux/Unix systems. 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.
Its a System V-launched service. The NFS server package includes three facilities, included in the portmap andnfs-utils packages.
- portmap : It maps calls made from other machines to the correct RPC service (not required with NFSv4).
- nfs: It translates remote file sharing requests into requests on the local file system.
- rpc.mountd: This service is responsible for mounting and unmounting of file systems.
Important Files for NFS Configuration
- /etc/exports : Its a main configuration file of NFS, all exported files and directories are defined in this file at the NFS Server end.
- /etc/fstab : To mount a NFS directory on your system across the reboots, we need to make an entry in/etc/fstab.
- /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.
- NFS Server: nfsserver.example.com with IP-192.168.0.100
- 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.
| Code Block |
|---|
[root@nfsserver ~]# yum install nfs-utils nfs-utils-lib [root@nfsserver ~]# yum install portmap (not required with NFSv4) |
| Code Block |
|---|
[root@nfsserver ~]# apt-get install nfs-utils nfs-utils-lib |
Now start the services on both machines.
| Code Block |
|---|
[root@nfsserver ~]# /etc/init.d/portmap start [root@nfsserver ~]# /etc/init.d/nfs start [root@nfsserver ~]# chkconfig --level 35 portmap on [root@nfsserver ~]# chkconfig --level 35 nfs on |
...
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.
...
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.
- 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.
- rw: This option allows the client server to both read and write access within the shared directory.
- sync: Sync confirms requests to the shared directory only once the changes have been committed.
- 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.
- 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.
...
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.
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The above command will mount that shared directory in “/mnt/nfsshare” on the client server. You can verify it following command.
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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“.
| Code Block |
|---|
[root@nfsclient ~]# vi /etc/fstab |
...
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 clientside or vice-versa.
At the nfsserver end
We have created a new text file named “nfstest.txt’ in that shared directory.
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Go to that shared directory in client server and you’ll find that shared file without any manual refresh or service restart.
...
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.
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Some more important commands for NFS.
- showmount -e : Shows the available shares on your local machine
- showmount -e <server-ip or hostname>: Lists the available shares at the remote server
- showmount -d : Lists all the sub directories
- exportfs -v : Displays a list of shares files and options on a server
- exportfs -a : Exports all shares listed in /etc/exports, or given name
- exportfs -u : Unexports all shares listed in /etc/exports, or given name
- exportfs -r : Refresh the server’s list after modifying /etc/exports