I've got two Ubuntu 5.10 workstations in a classroom and a SuSE 10 machine that I want to have be a server.

I want the server to provide file storage for the two Ubuntu PCs. As an experiment, I tried to setup NFS. Seemed to setup the parameters okay, but the NFS client (my test client was a 4th machine running SuSE, too just to eliminate the dual-distro issue) can't see any NFS servers.

Is NFS the best or easiest way to do what I want?

If not, what should I use?

If so, how can I get NFS to work? Here's some details:

I used the SuSE 10.0 Yast2 Network NFS Server setup and another SuSE 10.0 PC setup as NFS client. At the client I click on Add server, it looks for NFS servers for about a minute and comes back with a blank list.
So attempting command line I do:

cat /etc/exports
/shared/ *(rw,root_squash,sync) 192.168.1.24/24 (rw,root_squash,sync)

exportfx -r

showmount -e
Export list for linuxsrv:
/shared )everyone)

Still doesn't work.

I checked the "open firewall" box. Firewall shows NFS server and NFS client listed. I also tried many other configuations. Nada.

Not sure what to try next...

yeah, NFS is probably the best option, and it's generally really easy to set up.

on the client machine run "showmount -e nfs_server" to see what the client can make of the server over the network. also check you can ping it etc... in terms of firewalling, also try running "iptables -L" on both machines to see if there are any rules which might be blocking it.

also though, you've specified the network technically wrong, you should have 192.168.1.0/24, but i doubt that that would actually cause a problem.

I tried what you suggested.

iptables -L | grep nfs gives:
showmount -e nfs_server when run from the server OR from the client gives:
To see what the client is doing when I try to activate NFS, I used Ethereal and sniffed packets from client (I did this from server so I know the 2 machines can communicate over the LAN) For about two minutes it sends UDP broadcast (255) packets that are the Portmap protocol and say: I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the client is doing SOMETHING.

Any other suggestions will be tried and appreciated.

you didn't seriously literally run "showmount -e nfs_server" did you? you need to actaully point it at the server address... that was just an example...

Yes. I guess that shows how desperate I am.

In my first post I showed what I got with showmount -e.
I get the same result with showmount -e linuxsrv.site Which is: /shared (everyone)

I'll try the showmount -e linuxsrv.site on the client a bit later and let you know.

Okay,
I tried it and here goes;
That looked promising, so I referred to my "Linux Administration; A Beginner's Guide" for commands to use. (Remember, I had been using SuSE's Yast GUI) So I got:
Tried to access /shared. No deal. I tried to do without the "bg" portion and got:
Oops. That's right, I have to mkdir /shared!

So I do a ls on /shared and it works! (I see a bogus file I placed there for testing)

Now I try to save a new file to the /shared directory and I get an error. I'm thinking when I mkdir the /shared directory, the default permissions were for the root only so I need to chmod 777.

To make this permanent, would you agree that I need to enter into the /etc/fstab file?
Thanks. So much for using the GUI.