Linux NFS

The Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol that was originally developed by Sun Microsystems. It allows a client computer to “mount” network folders from a server so that the resulting mount appears and behaves as a local file system to the client. NFS builds on the Open Network Computing Remote Procedure Call system and is currently an open standard that is defined as an RFC, which allows anyone to implement it.

Ubuntu NFS version 4

Single server scenario

In this example we will install server NFS running on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and mount its exported file system to another Ubuntu host. This is the most common scenario where you will deploy a single server that allows one or more individual clients or networks to have access to one or more folders that can be mounted locally.

NFS server

One of requirments is that NFS server MUST have at least one static IP address that we can bind NFS service to. Next, be sure that the hostname (short and fully qualified) exist as an entry in your local hosts file.

vi /etc/hosts    # add a line below, so the static ip has short and FQDN names
10.0.0.100 nfs-server nfs-server.example.com
hostname -f   #verify FQDN

Install packages

• nfs-common - common NFS client library
• nfs-kernel-server - NFS server demon/service
• rpcbind - tells other networked machines at what location to find a service

sudo apt-get install nfs-common nfs-kernel-server rpcbind

Create default RPCBIND config file, to explicitly call out that we are not passing any options to the daemon

vi /etc/default/rpcbind    #crate a file with only line below
OPTIONS=""

Allow other hosts on the network contact our server. Here all hosts on 10.0.0.0/24 network cat use portmap service and in turn NFS shares.

vi /etc/hosts.allow
portmap: 10.0.0.

Enable idmapd, this is required for NFSv4

vi /etc/default/nfs-common  #add a line below
NEED_IDMAPD=YES

Configure idmapd, the file contains user mapping, you can leave it as it is

vi /etc/default/nfs-common

NFS Server - Export Configuration

Create NFS base share directory

mkdir /srv/exports

Make the directory available using the access control list for filesystems which may be exported to NFS clients

vi /etc/exports  #add the last line
# Example for NFSv2 and NFSv3:
#   /srv/homes  hostname1(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) hostname2(ro,sync,no_subtree_check)
# Example for NFSv4:
#   /srv/nfs4
#   gss/krb5i(rw,sync,fsid=0,crossmnt,no_subtree_check)
#   /srv/nfs4/homes  gss/krb5i(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
#
/exports 10.0.0.0/255.255.255.0(rw,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check,crossmnt,fsid=0)

This simple file does a number of things. It defines the base directory of our share (in our case the previously created directory we called /exports), it provides read and write access to anyone on our allowed client network, it gives remote root/admin users full control over local root owned files (no_root_squash), don’t worry about the exported directory being an entire file system (no_subtree_check), allow subdirectories of the exported folder to be seen as subfolders (crossmnt) and finally assume that the volume share exported is a regular file system and not another share or special device (fsid=0).

Flags:

• rw: This option gives the client computer both read and write access to the volume.
• sync: This option forces NFS to write changes to disk before replying. This results in a more stable and consistent environment since the reply reflects the actual state of the remote volume. However, it also reduces the speed of file operations.
• no_subtree_check: This option prevents subtree checking, which is a process where the host must check whether the file is actually still available in the exported tree for every request. This can cause many problems when a file is renamed while the client has it opened. In almost all cases, it is better to disable subtree checking.
• no_root_squash: By default, NFS translates requests from a root user remotely into a non-privileged user on the server. This was intended as security feature to prevent a root account on the client from using the file system of the host as root. no_root_squash disables this behavior for certain shares.

Start NFS deamon and verify rpcbind status

sudo service nfs-kernel-server start
sudo service rpcbind status

Configure Client

Install packages

sudo apt-get install nfs-common rpcbind

Mount NFS remote export

sudo mkdir /mnt/share
sudo mount.nfs4 10.0.0.100:/ /mnt/share

Verify mount

mount | grep nfs
10.0.0.100:/ on /mnt/share type nfs4 (rw,addr=10.0.0.100,clientaddr=10.0.0.11)
ls /mnt/share    #should show NFS server files within this exported directory

Make the export permanent in fstab

vi /etc/fstab #add below
10.0.0.100:/    /mnt/share  nfs4    rw 0 0