I am running slackware on a host machine running debian as a guest OS in vmware. I am trying to access my download folder so that I can install basic software without having to download it again in the guest OS!

As per the instructions in the slackbook I have added the following line to /etc/exports:

/home/jon23d/download 192.168.254.130(ro)

The IP listed is the ip of the guest OS. I have tried using other option combinations as well, but none of them seem to be helping! I would like to be able to let any of my guest OSs access this folder without having to change the UID or GID of the guest OS user.

I have added the following line to /etc/fstab in debian:

192.168.0.10:/home/jon23d/download /download nfs ro 0 0

So far so good..

Then I go to mount it that folder:

mount -t nfs 192.168.0.10:/home/jon23d/download /download

Alas... nothing happens, I have to press ctrl-c to get out of the nothingness... Any suggestions?

Have you tried rpcinfo to see if everything is running?
Did you run /etc/rc.d/rc.nfsd?

If you have the exported fs listed in fstab, you can just type:
You could use scp or sftp instead.

You can also use shfs

Thanks for the replies. I'd really like to figure out how to use NFS, who knows when it could come in handy. Am I correct in assuming that it is the standard way of hooking several linux boxes together?

I am still unable to connect, I have tried to do so on several different guest systems. If I am doing everything right then I wonder if it has something to do with the guest OS. When I enter the mount command I just get a blank line and sit there till I kill it...

Are you making sure that portmap is running on the client and server?

9 times out of 10, when I can't get a NFS share to mount, it is because I forgot to start portmap on the client machine.