Share drives and directories using NFS

draknfs

Prerequisites

When the wizard[15] is launched for the first time, it may display the following message:

The package nfs-utils needs to be installed. Do you want to install it?

After completing the installation, a window with an empty list is displayed.

Main window

A list of directories which are shared is displayed. At this step, the list is empty. The Add button gives access to a configuration tool.

Modify entry

The configuration tool is labeled "Modify entry". It may be also launched with the Modify button. The following parameters are available.

NFS Directory

Here you can specify which directory is to be shared. The Directory button gives access to a browser to choose it.

Host access

Here you can specify the hosts that are authorized to access the shared directory.

NFS clients may be specified in a number of ways:

single host: a host either by an abbreviated name recognized be the resolver, fully qualified domain name, or an IP address

netgroups: NIS netgroups may be given as @group.

wildcards: machine names may contain the wildcard characters * and ?. For instance: *.cs.foo.edu matches all hosts in the domain cs.foo.edu.

IP networks: you can also export directories to all hosts on an IP (sub-)network simultaneously. For example, either `/255.255.252.0' or `/22' appended to the network base address.

User ID Mapping

map root user as anonymous: maps requests from uid/gid 0 to the anonymous uid/gid (root_squash). The root user from the client cannot read or write to the files on the server which are created by root on the server itself.

allow real remote root access: turn off root squashing. This option is mainly useful for diskless clients (no_root_squash).

map all users to anonymous user: maps all uids and gids to the anonymous user (all_squash). Useful for NFS-exported public FTP directories, news spool directories, etc. The opposite option is no user UID mapping (no_all_squash), which is the default setting.

anonuid and anongid: explicitly set the uid and gid of the anonymous account.

Advanced options

Secured Connection: this option requires that requests originate on an internet port less than IPPORT_RESERVED (1024). This option is on by default.

Read-Only share: allow either only read or both read and write requests on this NFS volume. The default is to disallow any request which changes the filesystem. This can also be made explicit by using this option.

Synchronous access: prevents the NFS server from violating the NFS protocol and to reply to requests before any changes made by these requests have been committed to stable storage (e.g. disc drive).

Subtree checking: enable subtree checking which can help improve security in some cases, but can decrease reliability. See exports(5) man page for more details.

Menu entries

So far the list is has at least one entry.

File|Write conf

Save the current configuration.

NFS Server|Restart

The server is stopped and restarted with the current configuration files.

NFS Server|Reload

The configuration displayed is reloaded from the current configuration files.



[15] You can start this tool from the command line, by typing draknfs as root.

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