Setup a NFS Server on Ubuntu

Quick post on how to setup a NFS Server on Ubuntu and how to setup a mount point on the client side to interact with the NFS Server.

Server Side:

In this post 10.8.133.83 will be the IP of our NFS Server.

$ apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
$ sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common -y

Create the Directory for NFS and set permissions:

mkdir /vol
chown -R nobody:nogroup /vol

Allow Access for the Clients:

We need to set in the exports file, the clients we would like to allow:

• rw: Allows Client R/W Access to the Volume.
• sync: This option forces NFS to write changes to disk before replying. More stable and Consistent. Note, it does reduce the speed of file operations.
• no_subtree_check: This prevents subtree checking, which is a process where the host must check whether the file is actually still available in the exported tree for every request. This can cause many problems when a file is renamed while the client has it opened. In almost all cases, it is better to disable subtree checking.
• In order for the containers to be able to change permissions, you need to set (rw,async,no_subtree_check,no_wdelay,crossmnt,insecure,all_squash,insecure_locks,sec=sys,anonuid=0,anongid=0)

$ echo '/vol 10.8.133.83(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) 10.8.166.19(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) 10.8.142.195(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)' >> /etc/exports

Start the NFS Server:

Restart the service and enable the service on boot:

$ sudo systemctl restart nfs-kernel-server
$ sudo systemctl enable nfs-kernel-server

Client Side:

We will mount the NFS Volume to our Clients /mnt partition.

Install the dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install nfs-common -y

Test if we can mount the volume, then unmount it, as we will set the config in our fstab:

$ sudo mount 10.8.133.83:/vol /mnt
$ sudo umount /mnt
$ df -h

Set the config in your fstab, then mount it from there:

$ sudo bash -c "echo '10.8.133.83:/vol /mnt nfs auto,nofail,noatime,nolock,intr,tcp,actimeo=1800 0 0' >> /etc/fstab"
$ sudo mount -a
$ df -h

Now you shoule be able to write to your NFS Volume on /mnt from your client.

Sources:

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