[SOLVED] write permission for users on NFS folder

mahmoodn · 12-28-2010, 08:14 AM

I have setup a NFS server and this the content of /etc/exports at the server with IP A.B.C.D1 is:
/home/shared A.B.C.D2(rw,no_root_squash)

Problem is, only the root at A.B.C.D1 and A.B.C.D2 can write to that folder. How can I make that possible for other users?

kforbus · 12-28-2010, 10:44 PM

You could make the permissions on the directory you are exporting world readable/writable.

You could also create a group on both machines and add the users you want to have read/write access. Then set that group as the group owner on the directory with chgrp and apply the appropriate permissions using chmod. Just make sure the GID of the group is the same on both the NFS server and client machines.

If the UID of the user you're trying to write as doesn't have local permissions to the folder, then I don't think they will be able to write to it regardless of the rw option in the NFS exports file.

mahmoodn · 12-29-2010, 01:09 AM

What commands should I use? Also I have set rw for that folder in /etc/exports. Isn't enough?

linuxlover.chaitanya · 12-29-2010, 01:18 AM

No making rw in NFS will allow writable bit set in NFS but if the file system permissions are not set to allow write permissions to certain users, it will not allow writing to the folder. On the NFS server from where you have exported the share, use chmod 755 or whatever permissions you want on the folder.

mahmoodn · 12-29-2010, 01:25 AM

Currently it is set to 755 (server is A.B.C.D1)

Code:

mahmood@A.B.C.D1:home$ ls -l shared
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-12-27 17:40 a

So what should I do next?

linuxlover.chaitanya · 12-29-2010, 01:48 AM

If the only user from client is root, you should have no problems. But there are other users than root, one way is to synchronise the user ids on both, client and server and set the permissions accordingly. Else you could make the folder world writable by changing the permissions to 777. Its your take on it but I would not prefer to make it world writable if I do not know what I am doing. But synchronising users would also take a lot of time if you do not have centralised user management and to make it easy you could make the folder world writable.

Just change the permissions to 777 for the folder.

mahmoodn · 12-29-2010, 02:30 AM

so if I can do chmod 777, what was the purpose of /etc/exports? Shall I ignore that?

linuxlover.chaitanya · 12-29-2010, 03:07 AM

No. Both are independent. exports file is used to export the share over the network for clients over NFS. And file system permissions are guided by the host operating system. Both are needed. Unless you used exports file, clients would not see the shares.

mahmoodn · 12-29-2010, 03:17 AM

Thanks for your help.

linuxlover.chaitanya · 12-29-2010, 04:32 AM

And if there are any more doubts, you can google first. It should give you more information than what you need. And if you feel issue has been resolved, you should mark the thread solved.