[X-Unix] NFS share?

[Alexandre Gauthier]

John Davis wrote:

> Hi there everyone,
>                             I am attempting to create an NFS share 
> directory on my ibook  in the  /Users/Shared/ location , I named this 
> directory fc3 as I have placed some ISO images there 

Hello John! Sounds good, so you want to export /Users/Shared/fc3?

> so I can install Fedora Core 3 onto my imac from the ibook.

Uh... wait, let me read this again. There is a PPC version of Fedora 
Core? I tought it was x86 only... If not, well, do enlighten me :)

> I can't find much info anywhere as to what I have to do to configure 
> the NFS server. I added an exports file ( /Users/Shared/fc3 ro 
> mapall=nobody 192.254.129.117 ) to the "/etc"  directory and was 
> wondering exactly what it is I have to add to this file? 

Try putting this in /etc/exports

/Users/Shared/fc3   10.0.0.1(ro,sync,other_options)

Replace 10.0.0.1 by the ip of the client. and other_options by other 
options you might have. The syntax of the exports file is quite simple:

/path/to/export   host(options)

Host can be either an ip, a hostname or a subnet. (for instance 
192.168.0.0/24 or 10.0.0.0/8)
You can make use of wildcards. (i.e. workstation-*.network.company.com

As for option, they are a list separated by comas which will define the 
options for that particular host or subnet. For instance 
172.16.64.0.1(ro,sync,no_root_squash)

Would give read only access (as opposed to "rw", read write), sync'ed 
(as opposed to "async" asynchronous) and it would allow uid 0 (root) 
permissions to be inherited accross the share. (Don't do that unless you 
know what you're doing.) for 172.16.64.1. NFS effectively maps UIDs 
accross machine. So if you have a user john with uid 650 on machine A 
and Paul with uid 650 on machine B they're going to be the very same 
person as far as the OS is concerned. If you have John (uid 600) and 
John (uid 610), they will be different persons accross NFS shares. This 
behaviour is disabled for root (uid 0) by default -- no root squash 
prevents this. Looking at the man page would give more info. But I see 
up there that you seem to specify mapall=nobody. I don't recall ever 
using that directive, but the proper way to achieve this, i think, would 
be by using the "squash_all" option -- which will bind everyone to an 
anonymous gid and uid, which can be defined by "anonuid" and "anongid".

Once you're done editing the file, you can issue the command

#exportfs -a

To apply the changes to the running NFS server.

> I have connected to the ibook from the imac via eth0  after booting 
> from the "boot.iso" disk and I get the the message "This directory 
> cannot be mounted by the NFS server".


How do you boot the "boot.iso" disk?

>
>                           Obviously I am leaving something out and as 
> I am but a novice at this am finding it a bit of a challenge!

Well, is that NFS share under another nfs share? There is a recursion 
check in NFS that will prevent data from being displayed so people 
cannot go around your restrictions. It is possible to disable that 
restriction (no_subtree_checking or something like that, I don't have an 
NFS man page handy). Would you mind giving more details on the procedure? :)

-- 
Alexandre Gauthier
supernaut at underwares.org

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