Nfs-utils

Installation
Install :

Configuration
This section explains how to setup a simple NFS server - NFS client configuration. The NFSv4 server configuration is mostly like configuring the version 3, with one major change all NFS shares are exported from one virtual root directory.

The server has 2 NFS shares which are:
 * - directory with user homes
 * - directory with example data

These 2 shares are mounted on the server system at following points in the tree:

The client uses now TCP protocol as default, to mount NFS shares. Previous NFS versions use UDP as the default protocol.

Linux
Verify if NFS version 4 is enabled in current running linux kernel, this has to be ensured on the server as well as on the client installations:

Optionally NFSv4 support could be build as a kernel module. After NFSv4 support has been enabled, new linux kernel needs to be build, installed and the system has to be restarted.

/export
A virtual NFS root directory needs to be created:

Create 2 directories in the directory for NFS shares:

NFS shares
Mount the shares to its mount points:

Add following two lines to fstab, so NFS shares will still be available after a system reboot:

/etc/exports
NFS shares are configured in file. This file has following structure: source1        target1(option1,option2) source2        target2(option1,option3) For options consult following table:
 * source : is a directory the virtual root itself or particular nfs exported share f.e..
 * target : single host f.e. larrysPC, or a network 192.168.0.0/28, or a wildcard like f.e. * which means here it can be accessed from all networks by all hosts on all interfaces.

Specify the virtual root as the first entry, then define specific shares, in this particular case the file will look like in the example below:

/etc/conf.d/nfs
To provide NFSv4 protocol access only, specify which version of the NFS protocol the server has to use -V 4 and which versions are not supported -N 3 -N 2 in the  file

Starting service daemon
Finally start the configured NFS daemon:

As shown many services are started in specific order, rpcbind is started as the first service. If there is a need to stop the NFS service, the easiest way to stop all NFS services at once is to stop the rpcbind service itself.

It command will shutdown each service shown in the upper starting routine example:

Add nfs to a runlevel, to be able to use it after a reboot:

Mounting remote directories
Before mounting remote directories, a few daemons must be be started first. This is the job of the nfsclient init script.

The directories can then be mounted with following command:

Mounting at boot time
Add NFS shares to the file.
 * 1st option is to mount the NFS virtual root including all exported shares at once:


 * or the 2nd option is to define each NFS share individually, to have the ability to mount them to different local mount point:

Finally start the nfsmount service

Add nfsmount to the default startup level

At this point the NFS shares should be mounted on the client. It can be verified with following command:

Or run just:

Troubleshooting
Verfiying NFS server is running and listening for connections:

Verifying which NFS specific daemons are running:

Showing exported NFS shares on the server side:

Verfiying current open connections to the NFS server:

For more specific troubleshooting examples visit following links:
 * http://linux-nfs.org/wiki/index.php/General_troubleshooting_recommendations
 * http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/ar01s07.html

External resources

 * RFC 3530
 * Ubuntu Community Wiki NFSv4 article
 * Gentoo Community Wiki article article