General Information

Creating NFS shares on a server and connecting to them via a client.

Checklist

• Distro(s): Enterprise Linux 7
• Other: Two systems (server and client)

• Install required package

  yum install nfs-utils

• Start and enable the NFS Server

  systemctl start nfs-server
  systemctl enable nfs-server

• Create your share directory structure

  mkdir -p /data/share1

• Create an export line to share the directory

  vim /etc/exports
   
  /data/share1  192.168.1.0/24(rw)

  • /data/share1 ⇒ the directory to share
  • 192.168.1.0/24(rw) ⇒ share to entire network with read/write.
    • Other ways to share are to specify single hostnames(short, fqdn, single ip), IP networks (as shown), hostnames/domains with wildcards (*.mydomain.edu). See man exports for more details.
• If a firewall is running, allow nfs, rpc-bind, and mountd

  firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=nfs
  firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=rpc-bind
  firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=mountd
  firewall-cmd --reload

  • nfs (tcp/udp 2049) ⇒ needed for NFSv4
  • rpc-bind (tcp/udp 111) ⇒ needed for NFSv3 compatibility and for showmount to work from client
  • mountd (tcp/udp 20048) ⇒ needed for the “showmount -e hostname” command to work from a client

To increase NFS server performance, it is usually necessary to increase the number of NFS daemon processes running. (The default is very small at 8.)

• CentOS 7
  • Edit the following config file

    vim /etc/sysconfig/nfs
     
    # Number of nfs server processes to be started.
    # The default is 8.
    RPCNFSDCOUNT=16

  • Restart the nfs-config service

    systemctl restart nfs-config

  • Restart the nfs service

    systemctl restart nfs-server

  • Verify
    • NFS running sysconfig (takes effect after nfs-config restart)

      cat /run/sysconfig/nfs-utils
      RPCNFSDARGS=" 16"

    • “th” line in proc (number after 'th' is number of processes)

      grep th /proc/net/rpc/nfsd
      th 16 0 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

    • Running processes

      ps -elf | grep nfsd] | grep -v grep | wc -l
      16

• Install required package

  yum install nfs-utils

• View available mounts on NFS Server

  showmount -e fileserver01
   
  Export list for fileserver01:
  /data/share1 192.168.1.0/24

• Mount temporarily

  mount -t nfs fileserver01:/data/share1 /mnt

• Mount persistently

  vim /etc/fstab
   
  ## NFS Shares ##
  fileserver01:/data/share1  /remote  nfs  _netdev  0 0

  • _netdev ⇒ Mount option to skip mounting this location until the network is available.