NFS Server Configuration

The main configuration of the NFS server is done in the /etc/exports file; this file has two elements: a directory to share, and a host with mount options. You can reload the server or use exportfs -ra.

Common options include root squashing, read size, write size, and read/write.

The syntax of the exports file is:

<DIRECTORY> <HOST OR NETWORK>(<OPTIONS>)

Sharing the /srv/nfs/ directory would have an entry like the one below:

/srv/nfs/   192.168.122.0/24(rw,sync,root_squash)

NFS Client Configuration

The NFS client mounts the remote filesystem on to the local system. There are a couple of commands specific to NFS:

• showmount command queries the mount daemon on the remote server for information, including the shares that are available for mounting:

# showmount -e SERVER
Export list for SERVER:
/srv/exports *

• portmap daemon is a dynamic port mapping daemon designed to reduce the usage of well-known port numbers. It is still used by NFS up to version 3, but not required by NFS version 4. It is required for the showmount command.

• mount command has the filesystem type NFS, which links to the mount.nfs command. There are two formats of the mount command for NFS shares.

  • One option for mounting NFS shares is mount HOST:/export /mount-point where the host:/export portion causes the mount​​​​​​​ command to process this mount as NFS.

  • The other form of the mount command is mount -t NFS HOST:/export /mountpoint which specifies which NFS is being used.

# mount SERVER:/share /mnt/share