FreeBSD6 Unleashed

Configuring an NFS Server

Setting up your FreeBSD machine to be an NFS server involves a one-line addition to /etc/rc.conf:

nfs_server_enable="YES"

Also, make sure that rpcbind_enable (portmap_enable prior to FreeBSD 5.0) is set to "YES" because it is disabled by default unless you override it. The rpcbind (or portmap) daemon needs to be running in order for NFS to work because the NFS server needs a mechanism by which to tell its clients which port to connect to. UDP services operate with only one “connection” per port, so while initial connections to the NFS server take place on the server port 2049, these connections are mapped by remote procedure call (RPC) services, provided by rpcbind, to a new and unused server port. Note that rpcbind ...