Adding a box to NFS

Micro420 · 08-27-2006, 04:34 PM

I have a computer that is acting as a the NFS server and it's working fine with the nodes in the network. The NFS server was all set up already for me. Now, I have a new linux box I would like to connect to this NFS file server. How would I do this?

On the NFS server, I checked the /etc/exports and added the computer. Currently it looks like this:

Code:

/export 10.0.0.0/255.0.0.0(rw,async)  
/export/home 192.168.1.3/255.255.255.0(rw)

I try mounting it from the client:

Code:

mount -t nfs 192.168.1.2:/export /mnt/nfs

I get a 'connection refused'

I read on my O'Reilly books that the NFS hosts has to have the same userID/GroupID. Is this true? Could that be why?

Brian1 · 08-27-2006, 06:30 PM

Is there a firewall on the new machine blocking the ports for nfs connections?

Brian1

Micro420 · 08-27-2006, 06:58 PM

No firewall whatsoever.

mount: RPC: Remote system error - Connection refused

Brian1 · 08-27-2006, 07:21 PM

Theonly thing that differs from your exports file and mine is there is a / after the share. /export/home/ 192.168.1.3/255.255.255.0(rw)

Other than that not sure as long as the service is running.
Which distro you using?
What are the permissions on the nfs share?

Brian1

Micro420 · 08-27-2006, 08:01 PM

Thanks for the quick reply, Brian1. I am using CentOS 4.3. I just realized that I should restart the NFS daemon, but at the moment I cannot do this due to people currently using the system. I'm hoping a simple NFS restart will fix this problem.

Brian1 - did you have to sync up your userID's and groups? Anything with /etc/passwd and /etc/group that was synced? My O'Reilly book tells me that the UserID and GroupID must match on all the hosts. I manually went into those files and changed the UID and GID to the same as the new box I am trying to connect to the NFS server.

Brian1 · 08-27-2006, 08:13 PM

No other changes. Just modify exports and restart the service.

Brian1

irpstrcr · 08-27-2006, 10:51 PM

You can add and remove exports whithout restarting nfsd with exportfs.

to export:
exportfs -o <options> <client>:<path>

to remove exports:
exportfs -u <client>:<path>

to show what is being exported:
showmount -e

Micro420 · 08-27-2006, 10:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by irpstrcr

You can add and remove exports whithout restarting nfsd with exportfs.

to export:
exportfs -o <options> <client>:<path>

to remove exports:
exportfs -u <client>:<path>

to show what is being exported:
showmount -e

Thanks for showing me the commands. Unfortunately I'm still hesitant to touch the NFS right now as there are some important jobs running in our cluster and I don't completely understand what those commands will do. I'd hate to interfere with the NFS and have the jobs have to restart. They'd kill me! LOL The jobs have been running non-stop over the weekend and this isn't urgent. Thanks!

Micro420 · 09-02-2006, 08:39 PM

THanks guys, I got my NFS working! It turns out that CentOS had turned on the firewall and IPtables. Once I disabled them, my NFS works as you all mentioned! THANK YOU!

One last question, and this isn't important, but I read in my O'Reilly NFS book that the UID and GID have to be the same on both computers. I now notice that on the client connected to the NFS, the permissions of the users are all mish-mashed. For example, UID 500=joe on the server. UID 500=sara on the client. When the client mounts the NFS from the server, it automatically gives the permissions to whoever has UID 500 (computers don't care about names!!!! LOL). Is there any easy way to fix this other than going into the /etc/passwd and /etc/groups file and manually syncing them? Again, no big deal. I'm glad I got it working this far!