HowTo: NFS Server/Client [Linux]

Why NFS?
I simply wanted to experiment with NFS, and couldn't seem to find the documentation here on the forums. I found using NFS just as easy if not easier than using Samba for sharing between a few of my Unix based systems. In order to share a folder it only required a single line in a configuration file under /etc/exports, and a single line under /etc/fstab on the client to mount the share on each client at boot.

I mostly edited and moved things around from these guides to make a more complete single guide to getting this working using Ubuntu.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/ubuntu...nfs-share.html (for client configuration)
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...nfs-mount.html (for mounting using fstab)
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...twork-nfs.html (contains more info about NFS)


Install NFS Server Support
at the terminal type
sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap
When configuring portmap do =not= bind loopback. If you do you can either edit /etc/default/portmap by hand or run:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure portmap
sudo /etc/init.d/portmap restart

Editing /etc/exports
the /etc/exports file is used for creating a share on the NFS server

invoke your favorite text editor or
sudo vi /etc/exports

Here are some quick examples of what you could add to your /etc/exports

For Full Read Write Permissions allowing any computer from 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.255

/files 192.168.1.0/24(rw,no_root_squash,async)

Or for Read Only from a single machine

/files 192.168.1.2 (ro,async)

save this file and then in a terminal type
sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Also aftter making changes to /etc/exports in a terminal you must type
sudo exportfs -a

Install NFS client support
sudo apt-get install portmap nfs-common

Mounting manually
Example to mount server.mydomain.com:/files to /files. In this example server.mydomain.com is the name of the server containing the nfs share, and files is the name of the share on the nfs server

The mount point /files must first exist on the client machine.

cd /
sudo mkdir files

 to mount the share from a terminal type

sudo mount server.mydomain.com:/files /files

 Note you may need to restart above services:

sudo /etc/init.d/portmap restart
sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-common restart

Mounting at boot using /etc/fstab
Invoke the text editor using your favorite editor, or

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

In this example my /etc/fstab was like this: 

server.mydomain.com:/files /files nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr

 You could copy and paste my line, and change “servername.mydomain.com:/files”, and “/files” to match your server name:share name, and the name of the mount point you created.

Test before Reboot:
type

mount /files

 in a terminal, and the mount point /files will be mounted from the server.     (source: ubuntu forums)