Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition

Mounting Filesystems

To enable an NFS client, mount a remote filesystem after NFS is started, either by using the mount command or by specifying default remote filesystems in /etc/fstab. For example:

#mount servername:/projects /mnt/nfs/projects

A mount request calls the server’s mountd daemon, which checks the access permissions of the client and returns a pointer to a filesystem. Once a directory is mounted, it remains attached to the local filesystem until it is unmounted with the umount command or until the local system is rebooted.

Usually, only a privileged user can mount filesystems with NFS. However, you can enable users to mount and unmount selected filesystems using the mount and unmount commands if the user option is set in /etc/fstab. This can reduce traffic by having filesystems mounted only when needed. To enable user mounting, create an entry in /etc/fstab for each filesystem to be mounted. You can verify filesystems that have been mounted by using the mount or showmount commands. Or, you can read the contents of the /etc/mtab file.