NFS Server & Client on FreeBSD

NFS Server & Client on FreeBSD

July 22, 2007 - 3:15am

Submitted by EvilGod on July 22, 2007 - 3:15am.

NFS refers to Network File System and as the name suggests allows any system to share a filesystem over the network.

NFS server configuration

NFS server is the system that allows other systems to mount it's filesystem as their own. The main daemons that need to be running are nfsd, mountd and rpcbind. Nfsd daemon services request from the clients and passes the requests to the mountd daemon. Mountd carries out the requests from nfsd. Rpcbind allows nfs clients to identify the ports that any RPC based service is running

Server side
Code:
vi /etc/rc.conf
nfs_server_enable="YES"
rpcbind_enable="YES"
mountd_flags="-r"
#if nfs client as well
nfs_client_enable="YES"

The filesystems to be exported are specified in /etc/exports
Code:
vi /etc/exports
#filesystem options remotesystems
#eg
/home -maproot=0:0 192.168.0.1
/home2 -ro 192.168.0.2

For various options see exportfs man page
The -maproot=root flag allows the root user on the remote system to write data on the exported file system as root. If the -maproot=root flag is not specified, then even if a user has root access on the remote system, he will not be able to modify files on the exported file system.

A remote host can only be specified once per file system, and may only have one default entry. For example, assume that /usr is a single file system. The following /etc/exports would be invalid:

Code:
# Invalid when /usr is one file system
/usr/src client
/usr/ports client

After changing /etc/exports reload nfsd server or mountd daemon
Code:
# /etc/rc.d/mountd onereload

Starting services on nfs server
Code:
/etc/rc.d/nfsd start
/etc/rc.d/rpcbind start
mountd -r

See exports
Code:
showmount -e
showmount -e "hostname"

Locking

Code:
rpc_lockd_enable="YES"
rpc_statd_enable="YES"

If i have missed something, then please comment friends..