Fred Palma | Computer Scientist

What is NFS?

NFS is a distributed file system that provides transparent access to files residing on remote disks. Developed at Sun Microsystems in the early 1980Õs. The NFS protocol has been revised a number of times over this time span. It is available on all Unix systems, including Berkeley 4.4 and Linux, VMS, Mac, IBM, and Novell. Other alternatives to NFS include:

Problems with NFS.

Why is NFS used then?

more info
Red Hat distributions (Mandriva, Fedora) look for nfs service, Debian like look for nfs-kernel-server.
Starting services:# /etc/init.d/portmap start
# /etc/init.d/nfs-common start
# /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server startor ( service portmap start; service nfs start, using Fedora)

NFS setup: Edit /etc/exports file.
Examples:
/home/files 192.168.0.*(ro)
/home/work 192.168.0.*(rw)
/files 192.168.0.3(rw)
/home/fred 192.168.0.*(rw,async)

If you use “noacess” parameter, you’ll be sharing only the files in the folder and blocking subfolders access.

After /etc/exports updates, restart the service:

# /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Start or stop the service:

# /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server stop
# /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start

(The service in Fedora calls nfs)

How to mount:

As root (or using sudo)
# mkdir /mnt/files
# mount -t nfs 192.168.0.1:/files /mnt/files

umount:
umount /mnt/files

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