In this post, we will be showing you how to install the NFS server and client, export shares, and mount\/unmout the NFS share on client.<\/p>\n
Note:<\/strong><\/p>\n For the demonstration, we will be using the two machines with the following details:<\/p>\n NFS host (Debian 10)<\/strong><\/p>\n NFS client (Debian 10)<\/strong><\/p>\n Note: The steps mentioned here have been tested on Debian 10 (Buster system). <\/strong><\/p>\n In the following section, we will first install the NFS server on our host machine. Then we will setup two share directories that are \/var\/nfs-public <\/strong>and \/var\/nfs-docs<\/strong> for sharing to client machines. Let\u2019s get started.<\/p>\n For a system to setup as an NFS server, you will need to install nfs-kernel-server<\/strong> package on it. On the NFS host machine, first, update the local repository index using the below command in Terminal:<\/p>\n Then install nfs-kernel-server<\/strong> using the below command:<\/p>\n Now you may be provided with the y\/n<\/strong> option to continue the installation. Hit y<\/strong> to continue, after which the system will begin the installation of the nfs-kernel-server<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Once the nfs-kernel-server<\/strong> is installed, you can verify the installation using the below command in Terminal:<\/p>\n Now, create a directory on the host that you want to set for sharing with the clients. We have created two directories \/var\/nfs<\/strong>–docs<\/strong> and \/var\/nfs-public <\/strong>with different configuration settings.<\/strong><\/p>\n For the \/var\/nfs-public<\/strong> directory, we will modify its ownership to nobody:nogroup<\/strong> using the below command:<\/p>\n To verify if the ownership has changed, use the below command:<\/p>\n For the \/var\/nfs-docs<\/strong>, we will not change the ownership.<\/p>\n Now we will configure the NFS server export file for sharing of the resources. The NFS export file is \/etc\/exports<\/strong> which can be edited as follows:<\/p>\n Now in this file, we will specify the directories that we want to share and the client that can access it. You can add entries in the NFS export file using the below syntax:<\/p>\n Where<\/p>\n For both our directories \/var\/nfs-docs<\/strong> and \/var\/nfs-public<\/strong>, we have added the following entries in the \/etc\/exports<\/strong> file:<\/p>\n Now in order to export the shares, you will have to restart the NFS server. Here is the command to do so:<\/p>\n Whenever you make any change in the \/etc\/exports<\/strong> file, make sure to restart the service to apply the configuration changes.<\/p>\n Alternatively, you can use this command to export the shares:<\/p>\n To verify if the NFS server is running without any issues check its status using the below command in Terminal:<\/p>\n If a firewall is enabled on the NFS server, you will need to configure it to allow clients to connect to NFS port 2049<\/strong>. To verify if the firewall is enabled on the NFS server, issue the below command in Terminal:<\/p>\n In the following output, you can see the active<\/strong> status which shows the firewall is enabled.<\/p>\n Now to allow clients to NFS port 2049<\/strong>, you will have to add a rule in the firewall. Issue the below command in Terminal to do so:<\/p>\n For instance, to allow whole subnet 192.168.72.0\/24<\/strong> access to NF port 2049<\/strong>, the command would be:<\/p>\n Then to verify if the rule has been added successfully, check the status of firewall:<\/p>\n The highlighted entry in the following output shows the connection from 192.168.72.0\/24<\/strong> is allowed<\/strong> to port 2049<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Now we have completed the configurations on the NFS Server. Let\u2019s move towards NFS client installation and configuration.<\/p>\n In the following section, we will first install the NFS client on our client machine. Then we will setup two mount points that are \/media\/public <\/strong>and \/media\/docs<\/strong> for mounting the remote NFS shares \/var\/nfs-public <\/strong>and \/var\/nfs-docs<\/strong>. Let\u2019s get started.<\/p>\n For a system to setup as an NFS client, you will need to install the nfs-common<\/strong> package on it. On the NFS client machine, first, update the local repository index using the below command in Terminal:<\/p>\n Then install nfs-common<\/strong> using the below command:<\/p>\n Now you may be provided with the y\/n<\/strong> option to continue the installation. Hit y<\/strong> to continue, after which the system will begin the installation of the nfs-common<\/strong> package.<\/p>\n On the client system, you will need to create a mount point to mount the shares located on the NFS server. On our client, we have created the two directories at \/media<\/strong> for our mount points:<\/p>\n Now we will mount the NFS shares on the mount points we created in the previous step. Here is the syntax to do so:<\/p>\n Where :<\/p>\n NFS_server_IP<\/strong> is the NFS server\u2019s IP address<\/p>\n NFS_share<\/strong> is the share located on the NFS server<\/p>\n client_mountpoint<\/strong> is the mount point where you want to mount the share.<\/p>\n From our NFS server, we have exported two shared directories that were :\/var\/nfs-docs<\/strong> and \/var\/nfs-public<\/strong>. On our client machine, we will mount one share \/var\/nfs-docs<\/strong> to one mount point \/media\/docs<\/strong> while the other share \/var\/nfs-public<\/strong> on the second mount point \/media\/public<\/strong>.<\/p>\n We have used the following commands to mount the NFS shares to the NFS client.<\/p>\n Now to verify if the NFS shared directories have been mounted successfully, issue the \u201cdf \u2013h\u201d command in Terminal:<\/p>\n Here is the output of \u201cdf -h\u201d command which shows two NFS shares at the bottom.<\/p>\n As we have mounted the shares on the \/media<\/strong> directory, you can also access the mounted directories from File Manager.<\/p>\n Each time you restart the client system, you will need to mount the NFS share manually using the mount command. This is okay for one time or occasional use. However, if you want the NFS shares access all the time, you will need to make the mount permanent using the \/etc\/fstab<\/strong> file.<\/p>\n Edit the \/etc\/fstab<\/strong> file:<\/p>\n Now add entries for your NFS share that you want to mount automatically:<\/p>\n Then save and close the \/etc\/fstab<\/strong> file.<\/p>\n Next time, when you reboot the system, the client will automatically mount the NFS shares.<\/p>\n Now we will test the access to NFS shared directories by creating a new file in each directory.<\/p>\n In the client machine, first, create a test1<\/strong> file as sudo in the local mount point \/media\/public<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Now check the ownership of the new file:<\/p>\n You will see the ownership of the file is nobody<\/strong> user and nogroup<\/strong> group. Although, we created the file as sudo on the client machine, but the NFS server has translated it to the ownership of the host nobody:nogroup<\/strong>. This means a root user on the client cannot perform the administrative task on the server\u2019s shared directory.<\/p>\n Now create a test1<\/strong> file as sudo in the second local mount point \/media\/docs<\/strong>:<\/p>\n If we check the ownership of this file, you will see it is owned by the root user and root group. This is because we have set the no_root_squash<\/strong> option which allows the root user on the client machine to act as a root on the server’s directory and can perform administrative tasks.<\/p>\n Now on the NFS server machine, check if you can view both files.<\/p>\n If you no longer need the NFS share, you can unmount it from the client system. To unmount the NFS shares, type umount followed by the name of the directory where the NFS share is mounted.<\/p>\n This is how you can setup NFS server and client in Debian 10 system. In this article, we have covered how to install the NFS server and client, configure NFS shared directories, and mount\/unmount the NFS shares on the client system. You may want to visit our post on How to Configure NFS Server and Client on Linux Mint 20<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NFS was developed by Sun Microsystems for sharing files and directories between their systems. NFS allows the systems on a network to share files through the TCP\/IP network.…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[17,35,91,90],"class_list":["post-2265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-debian","tag-debian-10","tag-linux","tag-nfs-client","tag-nfs-server"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxways.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxways.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxways.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxways.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxways.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linuxways.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxways.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxways.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxways.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxways.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
Installing and Configuring NFS server<\/h2>\n
Step 1: Install the NFS server on the host machine<\/h3>\n
$ sudo apt update<\/pre>\n
$ sudo apt install nfs-kernel-server<\/pre>\n
$ dpkg -l | grep nfs-kernel-server<\/pre>\n
Step 2: Create a shared directory on the host<\/h3>\n
$ sudo mkdir -p \/var\/nfs-docs<\/pre>\n
$ sudo mkdir -p \/var\/nfs-public<\/pre>\n
$ sudo chown nobody:nogroup \/var\/nfs-public<\/pre>\n
$ ls -la \/var\/nfs-public<\/pre>\n
![\"how](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-13.png\")
<\/p>\nStep 3: Export the shares<\/h3>\n
$ sudo nano \/etc\/exports<\/pre>\n
directory host1(options) host2(options)...hostN(options)...<\/pre>\n
\n
\/var\/nfs-public 192.168.72.159(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)\n\n\/var\/nfs-docs 192.168.72.159(rw,sync, no_root_squash,no_subtree_check)<\/pre>\n
![\"how](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-14.png\")
<\/strong>
\nIn the above configuration file, both entries tell the NFS server to share the \/var\/nfs-public <\/strong>and \/var\/nfs-docs <\/strong>directories with the NFS client 192.168.72.159<\/strong> with rw<\/strong> (read and write) permission. In the second entry, we have added the no_root_squash<\/strong> that allows the client to have root permissions on the NFS server as well. Once you are done with the export configurations, save and close the \/etc\/exports<\/strong> file.<\/p>\n$ sudo systemctl restart nfs-kernel-server<\/pre>\n
$ sudo exportfs -a<\/pre>\n
![\"how](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-15.png\")
<\/p>\n$ sudo systemctl status nfs-kernel-server<\/pre>\n
![](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-16.png\")
<\/p>\nStep 4: Set up Firewall on the NFS server<\/h3>\n
$ sudo ufw status<\/pre>\n
![](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-17.png\")
<\/p>\n$ sudo ufw allow from client_ip\/subnet_ID to any port nfs<\/pre>\n
$ sudo ufw allow from 192.168.72.0\/24 to any port nfs<\/pre>\n
$ sudo ufw status<\/pre>\n
![](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-18.png\")
<\/p>\nInstalling and Configuring NFS Client<\/h2>\n
Step 1: Install NFS Client Package on the Client Machine<\/h3>\n
$ sudo apt update<\/pre>\n
$ sudo apt install nfs-common<\/pre>\n
Step 2: Create Mount Points<\/h3>\n
$ sudo mkdir -p \/media\/docs\n\n$ sudo mkdir -p \/media\/public<\/pre>\n
Step 3: Mount NFS shares on the client manually<\/h3>\n
$ sudo mount NFS_server_IP:NFS_share client_mountpoint<\/pre>\n
$ sudo mount 192.168.72.158:\/var\/nfs-docs \/media\/docs\n\n$ sudo mount 192.168.72.158:\/var\/nfs-public \/media\/public<\/pre>\n
![](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-19.png\")
<\/p>\n$ df -h<\/pre>\n
![](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-20.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"how](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-21.png\")
<\/p>\nStep 4: Mounting the NFS shares on client automatically at Boot<\/h3>\n
$ sudo nano \/etc\/fstab<\/pre>\n
192.168.72.158:\/var\/nfs-docs \/media\/docs nfs rw,sync,hard,intr 0 0\n\n192.168.72.158:\/nfs-public \/media\/public nfs rw,sync,hard,intr 0 0<\/pre>\n
![\"how](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-22.png\")
<\/p>\nTest NFS Access<\/h2>\n
$ sudo touch \/media\/public\/test1<\/pre>\n
$ ls -l \/media\/public\/test1<\/pre>\n
![\"how](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-23.png\")
<\/p>\n$ sudo touch \/media\/docs\/test1<\/pre>\n
![](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-24.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"how](\"http:\/\/linuxways.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/word-image-25.png\")
<\/p>\nUnmounting the NFS Share from the Client machine<\/h2>\n
$ umount \/media\/docs\n\n$ umount \/media\/public<\/pre>\n