Linux NFS

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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.

RHEL 8

Install

sudo yum install -y nfs-utils
sudo systemctl start rpcbind # start required services
showmount -e SERVER_IP
sudo mount -t nfs SERVER_IP:/server/dir /client/dir


Create collaborative directory with set-GID - new files inherit parent dir group otherwise will use the user primary group

The setgid affects both files as well as directories. When used on a file, it executes with the privileges of the group of the user who owns it instead of executing with those of the group of the user who executed it. When the bit is set for a directory, the set of files in that directory will have the same group as the group of the parent directory, and not that of the user who created those files. This is used for file sharing since they can be now modified by all the users who are part of the group of the parent directory.

mkdir     /new/dir
chmod g+s /new/dir
touch     /new/dir/file


Virtual Data Optimizer (VDO), new in RHEL 7.5, it's a transparent compression/deduplication layer technology. Use cases like running multiple VMs on a single VDO volume let VDO shine.

yum install vdo
# Create a vdo volume
vdo create --name=vdo_vol --device=dev/devName --vdoLogicalSize=vol_size
# --vdoLogicalSize=50G # size we want to present to operating system 
# eg. 50G disk we can present as 100G because of de-duplication optimization enabled 
vdostatus --hu

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

Ubuntu 18, quick setup

NFS will translate any root operations on the client to the nobody:nogroup credentials as a security measure. Therefore, we need to change the directory ownership to match those credentials.

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive 
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y nfs-kernel-server 
# sudo useradd -m -d /home/nas nas
# sudo groupadd -f -g 1001 nas
# sudo usermod -a -G nas nas
# sudo mkdir -p /nas && sudo chown nas:nas /nas
sudo mkdir -p /nas
sudo chown nobody:nogroup /nas
# sudo chmod 0777 /nas
sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/nvme0n1
sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
echo '/dev/nvme0n1  /nas       ext4    defaults,nofail 0       2' | sudo tee --append /etc/fstab   >/dev/null
echo '/nas *(rw,sync,no_subtree_check,all_squash)'                | sudo tee --append /etc/exports >/dev/null
sudo systemctl restart nfs-server.service

NFS Server - export configuration

Create NFS general 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.
  • all_squash tells NFS that for any user connecting from 10.0.5.10, ignore their actual UID/GID and instead treat them as if UID=anonuid and GID=anongid. Since you set anonuid=0,anongid=0 that gives all users on 10.0.5.10 root access privileges on /STORAGE, effectively bypassing all security on /STORAGE and leaving it wide open to abuse from anyone appearing to come from the 10.0.5.10 IP address.


Start NFS deamon and verify rpcbind status

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

rpcinfo -p    # check that NFS is running on the server, run on nfs-server
rpcinfo -p <nfsServerIp|DNS> # run from nfs-client
exportfs -a   # apply exports changes, each time exports config file get changed
exportfs -rav # re-export the shares

Server operations

# List all exports
[root@nfs-server-5bqrf /]$ showmount -e localhost
Export list for localhost:
/        *
/exports *

# Show supported protocol versions
[root@nfs-server-5bqrf /]$ rpcinfo -s localhost
   program version(s) netid(s)                         service     owner
    100000  2,3,4     local,udp,tcp,udp6,tcp6          portmapper  superuser
    100005  3         tcp6,udp6,tcp,udp                mountd      superuser
    100003  4,3       udp6,tcp6,udp,tcp                nfs         superuser # <- NFS
    100227  3         udp6,tcp6,udp,tcp                nfs_acl     superuser
    100021  4,3,1     tcp6,udp6,tcp,udp                nlockmgr    superuser
    100024  1         tcp6,udp6,tcp,udp                status      29

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

Troubleshooting

Packet capture, running on nfs-server

tshark -tad -nr client.pcap -Y 'frame.number == 500' -O rpc | sed '/^Re/,$ !d' # 'Replay State/Auth State/client auth'
tshark -tad -nr client.pcap -Y nfs.status!=0

References