I ask this in a little different question before, but has anybody had any experience setting up nfs shares in Fedora so they can be mounted by other linux boxes ? Mounting other shares from Fedora isn't a problem (client), but making my own directories available to other linux systems (server) is what I'd like to know how to get running.... Anybody do this already with Fedora ?

This should be the same across all Linux distros.

Edit the /etc/exports file, and add the directories you want to share like this

/home/user_name servername(rw,no_root_squash)
/home/user2_name 10.201.36.0/24(rw,no_root_squash)
/home/user3_name *(ro,root_squash)

The first argument before the (), is for the hosts you want to be able to access the share. You can specify hostnames, IP addresses, subnets, or all with *.

rw, means read-write, ro means read-only

no_root_squash means that root users can have root access to all files on the share. The default is root_squash, which means that root users can only access files that are world readable.

After adding all the shared directories you want, you need to re-start (or start) nfsd. There should be a script somewhere in /etc/rc.d/init.d that will start nfs

Thanks Shubb - I have made the entries in the exports file and done the restart with exportfs -ra, even rebooted, yet when I do a rpcinfo -p, I don't see nfs in the list, or does it need to be there in order to work ? Trying to mount the shared directory from another linux box does not work either. Have you actually created exports and been able to mount them from another machine ?

Yes, I have set this up a few times, and I work with NFS mounts every day. The snippet that I posted here is a sample from a server that I have set up. I normally use Slackware, but I also tried it on a RedHat 9, and it works the same way.

Do you see the nfs processes running when you do a "ps -aux |grep nfs"?

Do you have iptables or another firewall set up on this machine? If so, are you sure that you opened all the ports?

When you try to mount from another machine, what errors do you get?

Found it - /etc/init.d/nfs start......

Thanks Shubb !