Network File System (NFS) Concepts

This post will discuss about the concepts involved in network file system (NFS) administration.

Prerequisites for NFS:

1. NFS daemons should be running on both client as well as server machines.
2. A file system should always be available on the server that has to be exported.
3. Exported file system must be mounted on the remote client machine.

NFS daemons are not running by default on new OS installation.

To active the NFSD daemons, following command needs to be run:

# startsrc –s nfsd

To start all daemons:

# startsrc –g nfs

Can also be activated from smit by running this command,

# smit mknfs

Exporting a Directory:

There are 2 ways to export a directory:

1. Using smit

# smit mknfsexp

It will update /etc/exports file. If the file does not exist, it will be created.

1. Through command line

End user or admin will create (update) /etc/exports file using,

# vi /etc/exports

If it does not exists, end user will create it and then run the export command,

# exportfs –a

This command will send the information available in /etc/exports file to the kernel.

Other Options available are:

# exportfs –u </dir name>

This will remove the information from /etc/exports file

This can also be done through smit using the following command:

# smit rmnfsexp

It will remove the information from /etc/exports file

To change the data through smit, command used is:

# smit chnfsexp

Will change the information in /etc/exports file

Verification:

To verify from the remote server:

# showmount –e <localhost> OR <ip address>

To check/verify from the client side:

Using smit,

# smit mknfsmnt

Using command line,

# mount –t nfs <ip address> </dir name> /mnt

To unmount:

# umount /mnt