LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Objective 2: Configuring an NFS Server

The Network File System (NFS) is the standard method for sharing files between Unix (and Unix-like) systems. Linux can be both an NFS server (offering its directories to other systems) and an NFS client (offering its own users access to directories on other systems).

The NFS Server

The NFS server can be installed by default during your distribution's installation process, but if NFS was not installed, you can install it from your distribution's installation media or FTP site. In addition to the NFS packages, you will need the following daemons and utilities.

Portmap

The NFS server system must be running the portmap daemon, a server for the RPC service directory.

The NFS-related RPC daemons

These are typically started automatically at boot time through /etc/init.d/nfs start and consist of:

rpc.nfsd

Handles file serving

rpc.statd and rpc.lockd

Handle lock management

rpc.rpquotad

Manages quotas

rpc.mountd

Checks mount requests and hands out access handles

Configuring NFS Server Exports

The server uses /etc/exports to configure NFS filesystems that it offers to remote systems. The format of the file entries is typically:

/path/to/export [host](options)

The first field, /path/to/export, is the path that you want to make available via NFS. An example would be /mnt/cdrom. The second field, host, is the hostname, specified by name or IP address (with an optional netmask), to which you want the filesystem to be made available. If nothing is supplied ...