Using Microsoft SFU for accessing NFS exports
In this tutorial, we will explore together and see how easy it is to install and configure Microsoft’s Windows Services For Unix (SFU) which is now already available for free. It provides a Unix subsystem and other parts of a full Unix environment on Windows NT and its successors. The subsystem included is known as Interix.
We will install SFU on a standalone Windows XP and access an exported NFS share on Debian 5. I will provide screenshots
wherever appropriate. So let’s get started.
We will begin with configuring our nfs server.
First, install nfs server
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.
I will export my home directory for the purposes of this tutorial, so in /etc/exports, I will just simply put in the following
/home/linuxgravity *(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 is the time to install and configure SFU. The first obvious step is to download the latest version of SFU (3.5 at this time) from here. Simply double clicking it will easily permit you extract it. Once completed, you would go the extracted directory and launch the SfuSetup. Installation is just like any other Windows application. In the Installation Options window, I will choose Standard Installation as show below:
The next screen relates to Security Settings. We can choose from two options. For this demonstration, I will just check none. The following screen allows us to select the scheme for mapping Windows users to Linux users. We will use local user mapping and passwd and group files. So we will select, Local User Name Mapping Server and Password and group file in this screen as show.
Before clicking Next, lets copy /etc/passwd and /etc/group files to our Windows XP machine using either ftp or winscp. I will place them inside c:\maps.
In the next screen, we just specify the paths for passwd and group files that we copied from our Linux box (NFS server).
And that’s it. Before configuring nfs export, we will start User Name Mapping service. So in the properties of User Mapping service in Services, change it to Automatic and start it.
Now if we go to My Network Places, Entire Network, we will notice a new entry NFS Network which will take us to the exported nfs directory.
At this point, we would have access to the exported directories and files that are world readable. To make file owned by certain users on Linux to users on Windows, we would set up User Mapping.
Open Services for as shown below
To create maps, we click on User mapping in the left pane and then Show User Maps under Maps in the right pane
We will map Windows Administrator to Linux root. So under windows user name type in Administrator and under Unix users type root and click Add. Click Apply at the top to save changes.
This mapping will allow Administrator to access any files/directories in the nfs exports that user root is allowed to access.
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February 11th, 2011 at 8:53 am
First, great information. Must try this at home.
But some important security notations.
As you never should login and run normal work under root, you should never run as Administrator in MS Windows. It is a very efficient way of getting viruses and roots on your machine.
So that’s why you don’t want to allow root access to your NFS shares, as NFS isn’t that hard to fake if someone has are not that hard to crack if you use NFS2 or NFS3. And you will have unknown people in your local net if you have a WLAN access.
If you use NFS4 with Kerberos, you will get a much better protection with singel sign on and encrypted communication. But then again, I don’t know if SFU support that.