How to Set Up an NFS Mount on Ubuntu 12

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How to Set Up an NFS Mount on Ubuntu 12.04

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About NFS (Network File System) Mounts

NFS mounts work to share a directory between several virtual servers. This has the advantage of saving disk space, as the homedirectory is only kept on one virtual private server, and others can connect to it over the network. When setting up mounts, NFS ismost effective for permanent fixtures that should always be accessible.

Setup

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An NFS mount is set up between at least two virtual servers. The machine hosting the shared network is called the server, whilethe ones that connect to it are called ‘clients’.

This tutorial requires 2 servers: one acting as the server and one as the client. We will set up the server machine first, followed bythe client. The following IP addresses will refer to each one:

Master: 12.34.56.789Client: 12.33.44.555

The system should be set up as root. You can access the root user by typing

sudo su-

Setting Up the NFS Server

Step One—Download the Required Software

Start off by using apt-get to install the nfs programs.

apt-get install nfs-kernel-server portmap

Step Two—Export the Shared Directory

The next step is to decide which directory we want to share with the client server. The chosen directory should then be added tothe /etc/exports file, which specifies both the directory to be shared and the details of how it is shared.

Suppose we wanted to share two directories: /home and /var/nfs.

Because the /var/nfs/ does not exist, we need to do two things before we can export it.

First, we need to create the directory itself:

mkdir /var/nfs/

Second, we should change the ownership of the directory to the user, nobody and the group, no group. These represent the defaultuser through which clients can access a directory shared through NFS.

Go ahead and chown the directory:

chown nobody:nogroup /var/nfs

After completing those steps, it’s time to export the directories to the other VPS:

nano /etc/exports

Add the following lines to the bottom of the file, sharing both directories with the client:

/home 12.33.44.555(rw,sync,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check)/var/nfs 12.33.44.555(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)

These settings accomplish several tasks:

rw: This option allows the client server to both read and write within the shared directory

sync: Sync confirms requests to the shared directory only once the changes have been committed.

no_subtree_check: This option prevents the subtree checking. When a shared directory is the subdirectory of a largerfilesystem, nfs performs scans of every directory above it, in order to verify its permissions and details. Disabling thesubtree check may increase the reliability of NFS, but reduce security.


2 de 8 05/08/2013 20:41

no_root_squash: This phrase allows root to connect to the designated directory

Once you have entered in the settings for each directory, run the following command to export them:

exportfs -a

Setting Up the NFS Client

Step One—Download the Required Software

Start off by using apt-get to install the nfs programs.

apt-get install nfs-common portmap

Step Two—Mount the Directories

Once the programs have been downloaded to the the client server, create the directories that will contain the NFS shared files

mkdir -p /mnt/nfs/homemkdir -p /mnt/nfs/var/nfs

Then go ahead and mount them

mount 12.34.56.789:/home /mnt/nfs/homemount 12.34.56.789:/var/nfs /mnt/nfs/var/nfs

You can use the df -h command to check that the directories have been mounted. You will see them last on the list.

df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on/dev/sda 20G 948M 19G 5% /udev 119M 4.0K 119M 1% /devtmpfs 49M 208K 49M 1% /runnone 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/locknone 122M 0 122M 0% /run/shm12.34.56.789:/home 20G 948M 19G 5% /mnt/nfs/home12.34.56.789:/var/nfs 20G 948M 19G 5% /mnt/nfs/var/nfs

Additionally, use the mount command to see the entire list of mounted file systems.

mount

Your list should look something like this:

/dev/sda on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,barrier=0) [DOROOT]proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)rpc_pipefs on /run/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)12.34.56.789:/home on /mnt/nfs/home type nfs (rw,vers=4,addr= 12.34.56.789,clientaddr=12.33.44.555)12.34.56.789:/var/nfs on /mnt/nfs/var/nfs type nfs (rw,vers=4,addr=12.34.56.78,clientaddr=12.33.44.555)


3 de 8 05/08/2013 20:41

Testing the NFS Mount

Once you have successfully mounted your NFS directories, you can test that they work by creating files on the Client andchecking their availability on the Server.

Create a file in each directory to try it out:

touch /mnt/nfs/home/example /mnt/nfs/var/nfs/example

You should then be able to find the files on the Server in the /home and /var/nfs directories.

ls /home

ls /var/nfs/

You can ensure that the mount is always active by adding the directories to the fstab file on the client. This will ensure that themounts start up after the server reboots.

nano /etc/fstab

12.34.56.789:/home /mnt/nfs/home nfs auto,noatime,nolock,bg,nfsvers=3,intr,tcp,actimeo=1800 0 012.34.56.789:/var/nfs /mnt/nfs/var/nfs nfs auto,noatime,nolock,bg,nfsvers=3,intr,tcp,actimeo=1800 0 0

You can learn more about the fstab options by typing in:

man nfs

Any subsequent restarts will include the NFS mount—although the mount may take a minute to load after the reboot You cancheck the mounted directories with the two earlier commands:

df -h

mount

Removing the NFS Mount

Should you decide to remove a directory, you can unmount it using the umount command:

cdsudo umount /directory name

You can see that the mounts were removed by then looking at the filesystem again.

df -h

You should find your selected mounted directory gone.

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Comments

pc-raed818


4 de 8 05/08/2013 20:41

great tutorial , thank you so much

Posted March 2nd, 2013 20:45

robert.simpson.lists

mount hangs when I try to mount the fs on the client.

Posted March 16th, 2013 14:42

robert.simpson.lists

Also portmap has been renamed to rpcbind (and I think it's installed when you install nfs-common).

Posted March 16th, 2013 14:44

jakub

yep, mount hangs… :/

Posted April 29th, 2013 13:24

jakub

This is missing in tutorial:server$ sudo service nfs-kernel-server startclient$ sudo chmod og+w /mnt/nfs/home

now it mounts… :P

Posted April 29th, 2013 13:35

scriptfang

once in a blue moon I find a really good tutorial.

Yours is one of them. Thank you. Really thankyou.

I am and old user of nfs. but sometimes I need to refresh my memory with some parameters. That is why I found you.

Keep the good work.

Posted May 16th, 2013 15:22


5 de 8 05/08/2013 20:41

Kamal Nasser

@scriptfang: Thanks for the feedback! :]


kourtzis

:-(On the server:$ service nfs-kernel-server startFATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/3.8.0-19-generic/modules.dep: No such file or directory* Not starting NFS kernel daemon: no support in current kernel.


Kamal Nasser

@kourtzis What's the output of 'uname -rsi'?


djedge2008

Tutorial worked like a charm, but when using rsync to move files from one server to another, the files aren't removed from thesource server... for example: rsync -avh --remove-source-files --progress /mnt/nfs/xfer/series /srv/fs1/work/iso

I'd been using cifs for this but it was painfully slow on linux to linux ... NFS is much faster.

I've got the nfs mount as follows in fstab:

192.168.0.50:/srv/xfer /mnt/nfs/xfer nfs auto,noatime,nolock,bg,nfsvers=3,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,intr,tcp,actimeo=1800 0 0

the export from the nfs server is:

/srv/xfer 192.168.0.42(rw,sync,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check)

all folders and files within /srv/xfer are owned by nobody with nogroup

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Posted July 5th, 2013 12:14

djedge2008


6 de 8 05/08/2013 20:41

Further expansion of previous post....

The source box shows the files as gone and removed using ls in shell...

Windows 7 samba shows the files still there and i can copy them even though linux shows they are gone...

What gives lol


djedge2008

Solving my own post....... There must be some kind of delay with the directory listings ... After refreshing the folder a couple oftimes from the windows box the files that were moved via rsync were removed out of the list.


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How to Set Up an NFS Mount on Ubuntu 12