There is a new version of this tutorial available for Debian 12 (Bookworm).

Setting up an NFS Server and Client on Debian Wheezy

This guide explains how to set up an NFS server and an NFS client on Debian Wheezy. NFS stands for Network File System; through NFS, a client can access (read, write) a remote share on an NFS server as if it was on the local hard disk. In this Tutorial, I will show you two different NFS exports, the export of a client directory that stores files as user nobody/nogroup without preserving filesystem permissions and a export of the /var/www directory which preserves permissions and ownership of files, as required on a hosting server setup.

1 Preliminary Note

I'm using two Debian Wheezy systems here:

  • NFS Server: server.example.com, IP address: 192.168.0.100
  • NFS Client: client.example.com, IP address: 192.168.0.101

2 Installing NFS

server:

On the NFS server we run:

apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common

Then we create the system startup links for the NFS server and start it:

client:

On the client we can install NFS as follows (this is actually the same as on the server):

apt-get install nfs-common

3 Exporting Directories on the Server

server:

I'd like to make the directories /home/client1 and /var/www accessible to the client to show the two different access modes of the NFS server. The directory /home/client1 is shared in standard mode, so all files written to this directory are stored as user nobody and group nogroup. For the directory /var/www I use the no_root_squash option which instructs the nfs server to preserve permissions and ownership of the files. This is e.g. required when you like to export the /var/www directory of a web server managed with ISPConfig 3

First, I'll create the /home/client1 directory

mkdir /home/client1
chown nobody:nogroup /home/client1
chmod 755 /home/client1

The /var/www directory exists most likely on your server. If not, then create it:

mkdir /var/www
chown root:root /var/www
chmod 755 /var/www

Now we must modify /etc/exports where we "export" our NFS shares. We specify /home/client1 and /var/www as NFS shares and tell NFS to make accesses to /home/client1 as user nobody (to learn more about /etc/exports, its format and available options, take a look at

man 5 exports

)

vi /etc/exports
/home/client1           192.168.0.101(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
/var/www        192.168.0.101(rw,sync,fsid=0,crossmnt,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash)

(The no_root_squash option makes that /var/www will be accessed as root.)

To apply the changes in /etc/exports, we restart the kernel nfs server

/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

4 Mounting the NFS shares on the Client

client:

First, we create the directories where we want to mount the NFS shares, e.g.:

mkdir -p /mnt/nfs/home/client1
mkdir -p /var/www

If the direcory /var/www exists already on your server, then stop apache, rename the directory and create a new empty directory as mountpoint

/etc/init.d/apache2 stop
mv /var/www /var/www_bak
mkdir -p /var/www

Afterwards, we can mount them as follows:

mount 192.168.0.100:/home/client1 /mnt/nfs/home/client1
mount 192.168.0.100:/var/www /var/www

You should now see the two NFS shares in the outputs of

df -h
[root@client ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg_server2-LogVol00
                      9.7G  1.7G  7.5G  18% /
tmpfs                 499M     0  499M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1             504M   39M  440M   9% /boot
192.168.0.100:/home/client1   9.7G  1.7G  7.5G  19% /mnt/nfs/home/client1
192.168.0.100:/var/www
                      9.7G  1.7G  7.5G  19% /var/www
[root@client ~]#

and

mount
[root@client ~]# mount
/dev/mapper/vg_server2-LogVol00 on / type ext4 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext4 (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
192.168.0.100:/home/client1 on /mnt/nfs/home/client1 type nfs (rw,vers=4,addr=192.168.0.100,clientaddr=192.168.0.101)
192.168.0.100:/var/www on /var/www type nfs (rw,vers=4,addr=192.168.0.100,clientaddr=192.168.0.101)
[root@client ~]#

5 Testing

On the client, you can now try to create test files on the NFS shares:

client:

touch /mnt/nfs/home/client1/test.txt
touch /var/www/test.txt

Now go to the server and check if you can see both test files:

server:

ls -l /home/client1/
[root@server ~]# ls -l /home/client1
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 nobody nogroup 0 Feb 02 16:58 test.txt
[root@server ~]#
ls -l /var/nfs
[root@server ~]# ls -l /var/www
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 02 16:58 test.txt
[root@server ~]#

(Please note the different ownerships of the test files: the /home/client1 NFS share gets accessed as nobody / nogroup and is owned by nobody / nogroup; the /var/www share gets accessed as root, therefore /var/www/test.txt is owned by user and group root.)

6 Mounting NFS Shares At Boot Time

Instead of mounting the NFS shares manually on the client, you could modify /etc/fstab so that the NFS shares get mounted automatically when the client boots.

client:

Open /etc/fstab and append the following lines:

vi /etc/fstab
[...]
192.168.0.100:/home/client1  /mnt/nfs/home/client1   nfs      rw,sync,hard,intr  0     0
192.168.0.100:/var/www  /var/www   nfs      rw,sync,hard,intr  0     0

Instead of rw,sync,hard,intr you can use different mount options. To learn more about available options, take a look at

man nfs

To test if your modified /etc/fstab is working, unmount the shares and run mount -a:

umount /mnt/nfs/home/client1
umount /var/www
mount -a

You should now see the two NFS shares in the outputs of

df -h
[root@client ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg_server2-LogVol00
                      9.7G  1.7G  7.5G  18% /
tmpfs                 499M     0  499M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1             504M   39M  440M   9% /boot
192.168.0.100:/home/client1   9.7G  1.7G  7.5G  19% /mnt/nfs/home/client1
192.168.0.100:/var/www
                      9.7G  1.7G  7.5G  19% /var/www
[root@client ~]#

and

mount
[root@client ~]# mount
/dev/mapper/vg_server2-LogVol00 on / type ext4 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext4 (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
192.168.0.100:/home/client1 on /mnt/nfs/home/client1 type nfs (rw,vers=4,addr=192.168.0.100,clientaddr=192.168.0.101)
192.168.0.100:/var/www on /var/www type nfs (rw,vers=4,addr=192.168.0.100,clientaddr=192.168.0.101)
[root@client ~]#

7 Credits

This Tutorial is based in the Centos NFS Server Tutorial from Falko Timme.

8 Links

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