nfs & /etc/fstab

OK I don't know anything about setting up nfs, or configuring it. Until I do I'm not about to try writing help files on it :). If anyone wants to contribute a section here it would be appreciated. Same goes for Samba, and smb.

Well that said, Bruce did. So thank's to Bruce here is a short section on nfs.

NFS is another filesystem type, however it specifies a remote filesystem. This remote filesystem can be of any type, so long as they are running a standard NFS server you can mount it, or attempt to at any rate (your machine needs permission from the remote machine to be able to mount its filesystems)

A typical line to mount a NFS partition from a remote host looks something like:

203.17.162.10:/cdrom	/rcdrom	nfs	noauto,ro	0 0

The first field is where we are mounting the filesystem from, in this case a machine 203.17.162.10 and a directory /cdrom on that machine. (IP numbers are better than names when using NFS - you could use smople.thehub.com.au:/cdrom - this is just a performance issue.)

You can then treat this mounted partition as you would any other, which makes it especially useful for 'diskless' workstations or machines which have a small HDD to get it running, then talk to the main server for everything else.

Setting up NFS servers is a subject not dealt with lightly, as there are a few security issues to deal with. Quick reads are exports(5), mountd(8), nfsd(8) and nfs(5)

<< Contents >>