Dear All,

I have a RedHat Enterprise Linux 3.0 already installed on 1 pc. i now want to install RHEL 3 on another pc using NFS. for this, on my 1st Linux PC, I copied the RPMS and images directories from the Installation CDs and dumped them into the location /var/cdimage.

The IP of my existing Linux pc is 192.168.10.99/255.255.255.0 & the hostname is test. I have not configured any services on this pc like NIS, DNS, DHCP etc. It is a basic Linux Server. I opened the /etc/exports file and put in the following entry :-

192.168.10.99:/var/cdimage 192.168.10.0/255.255.255.0 (rw,sync)

I then started my nfs and portmap services. then, i booted my other pc with the installation cd and then on the prompt, I typed "linux askmethod". then i selected "nfs image". In the next screen, I specified the ip as 192.168.10.101 (since i dont have DHCP server). In the next screen, i gave the nfs server name as 192.168.10.99 and the directory as /var/cdimage.

It gives me an error message "could not mount specified directory" and then stops. Could someone kindly let me know if this sort of installatoin requires any other server service? would really really appreciate if someone could throw some light on this

hi ,

you just again check ur firewall or allow the portmap service open or disable iptables then try installation
check setting that entry u have made in /etc/exports

Hi,

My iptables are off. I am still having this problem. I performed a local install on the other pc and then tried to mount the shared directory with the following command :-

mount 192.168.10.9:/var/cdinst /opt

it gave a "permission denied" error message. So, my basic NFS is not working. I checked up with all the necessary services, namely portmap and nfs. all nfs based daemons are running and the command rpcinfo -p is also showing that nfs is properly configured. Please if anyone can give a solution i will be really grateful

Still waiting for help in this matter. Please help !!!! Will really be grateful

what does /etc/hosts and etc/hosts.allow say?

Check these out:

On 192.168.10.99:
/etc/exports should include:
/var/cdimage 192.168.10.0/255.255.255.0 (rw,sync)
(and quite possibly "no_root_squash" option as well)
/etc/hosts
192.168.10.101 test
/etc/hosts.allow
nfsd,portmap: test
(I think that portmap needs to be specified explicitly and isn't included in 'all")

then restart inetd and portmap
/etc/init.d/inetd restart
/etc/init.d/portmap restart
(or whatever your distro uses to restart these)

if you put * instead of 192.168.10.0/255.255.255.0
you should be able to test nfs server with:
showmount -a localhost
and
mount localhost:/var/cdimage /mnt/test_mount


hope there's something in there that makes a difference

Hi,

Thank you so much for the detailed solution uberNUT. I had made a very silly mistake. in my /etc/exports file, i made the entry as

192.168.10.9:/var/cdimage 192.168.10.0/255.255.255.0(ro,sync)

instead of

/var/cdimage 192.168.10.0/255.255.255.0 (ro,sync)

:-))))))

Thanks a lot. your detailed info also gives me insight into working on my advanced linux areas.