Sharing a directory using nfs

This tutorial will walk you through exporting a directory so that we can read from or write to it. I will make it really simple so that in emergency situations, you are good to go within a few minutes

First install nfs server (I am on Debian 5.0, other distributions would have a the nfs package name similar to that)

aptitude install aptitude install nfs-kernel-server

After we have the nfs server installed, you need to export the directory by using the /etc/exports file. The format of the file is:

dir_to_be_exported allowed_hosts(options)

I am just about to export my home dir and allowing only 192.168.2.10 to mount it, so in /etc/exports, I would the following:

/home/linuxgravity 192.168.2.10(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)

That’s it. That was so easy, isn’t it.

Restart nfs server:

/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Now it is time for us to mount the shared (exported) directory to mount it on an empty directory. So while in the 192.168.2.10, first we would create a directory

mkdir /home/remote_home

Now just mount it with the following magically command:

mount 192.168.2.2:/home/linuxgravity /home/remote_home

As you have already figured out, the format is mount nfs_server_ip:exported_dir mount_point

And now you can just read from/write to /home/remote_home easily.

The whole process takes only less than two minutes.

Tip: showmount command on nfs server would actually show you which clients have mounted the exported directory.

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