Set up an NFS server
| Time to replay | 10 min |
| Example Distro | SUSE Linux 10 |
| Type | HowTo |
You want to share folders of your computer in the network. So, your computer plays the role of the NFS server. The network drives are exported by the server, that's how NFS calls it. The following is an example how you get a folder /public that is shared in your network. It uses SUSE Linux 10, but the process for other distributions should be similar. We use server as hostname for the computer exporting directories.
To do this,
- Have NFS installed as described at installing software, in the case of SUSE Linux:
yast -i nfs-kernel-server
- Create the directory /public (the name /public will be used here as an example)
mkdir /public
- Edit /etc/exports, add the line
/public/ *(rw,no_root_squash,sync)
- Start the NFS-Server:
/etc/init.d/nfs-user-server start || /etc/init.d/nfsserver start
This command makes sure your nfs server gets started, no matter if your distribution names its startup script "nfs-user-server" or "nfsserver".
Verify the result
Issue on your computer: showmount -e 127.0.0.1. The result will be like this:
Export list for 127.0.0.1: /public *
By this command, you can see that a share /public is available on your computer, so it is an NFS-Server.
Use the network drive
To use the network drive on a client computer, go there and try if you can reach the NFS server:
ping server
Mount the server's export to (as an example) /mnt/nfs
mkdir -p /mnt/nfs mount server:/public /mnt/nfs
You can make this mount persistant by using the fstab.
