Hi everyone,
Im relatively new to Linux - just started working with it this week - and Im having some trouble setting up NFS. We have a 12 computer cluster running open SUSE in our lab at school, and I am trying to troubleshoot the NFS system we have created.

My basic question is this - I want to find the file that sets whether or not the NFS server and client processes run on setup. Google indicates that in most linux installations, these settings can be found in the /etc/rc.conf file. I cant find this file in open SUSE, so what Im trying to figure out is where I would find the equivalent commands in open SUSE. I am basically trying to find the lines highlighted in this: <http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/network-nfs.html> article are stored. I already know how to enable/disable the NFS server/client using YaST in the GUI, but I would prefer to find the file directly, as changing the settings in the GUI involves plugging a monitor, keyboard, and mouse into each of 12 boxes, and is very time consuming. I can change files straight from the terminal command line - much faster.

Additional background:
We are using NFS in two ways on our cluster - firstly, we have installed the software package (Fluent) on the host computer, and then setup the host to share this folder with the 11 slaves. To do this, we set the host as an NFS server, with the 11 slaves as NFS clients of this folder.

Secondly, we have setup working folders on each of the slaves that we would like to use to store data (each computer has a 1.5TB drive inside). To do this, we have set each of the slaves as an NFS server, sharing the working directory with the host computer, which we setup as an NFS client of each of these 11 working folders.

The problem that I am experiencing is that each of these two things works properly by itself, but when we try to use a computer as both an NFS server and an NFS client at the same time (albeit to different folders), neither works.

Any thoughts on how to move forward in troubleshooting this? My current plan of attack is to unplug all of the slaves except for one from the network, and try to get a single slave to communicate properly with the host. Once I get the first slave running, I was going to add additional slaves one at a time until they were all working. Thoughts?

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated, and thanks for sticking with me through a long post
Jimmy

Use the find command to find the three letter combination nfs. There seem to be two files you might be interested in: /etc/services and /etc/init.d/nfs.
find /etc -type f | xargs grep -i nfs

Time was that Suse included a user manual and a system administrator's manual in the distro. Since Novell took over, the system admin manual seems to have fallen by the wayside. You can find the latest here. Look at the Reference - Services section for what info there is about setting up NFS.

Here is something you might also find useful: http://linuxmafia.com/linux/suse-lin...chapter20.html

Thanks for the help - we got the problem straightened out today. It had to do with some of the clients trying to use an NFSV4 protocol, while all of the servers were expecting basic NFS. Thanks for the links - that definitely helped us work through the setup process systematically

Thanks
Jimmy