Quick NFS Server configuration on Redhat 7 Linux System

Basic NFS Configuration

In this config will guide you trough a quick and basic configuration of NFS server on RHEL7 Linux system. We do not take any security concerns into the consideration, nor we will be concerned with fine tuning and access control. In our scenario we define two hosts:

  • NFS Server, IP 10.1.1.100
  • NFS Client, IP 10.1.1.18

Assuming your already have a running Redhat 7 Linux system in order to setup NFS server you will need to install few additional packages:

NFS Server configuration

Run the below commands to begin the NFS Server installation:

[nfs-server ]# yum install nfs-utils rpcbind

Next we export some arbitrary directory called /opt/nfs. Create /opt/nfs directory:

[nfs-server ]# mkdir -p /opt/nfs

and edit /etc/exports NFS exports file to add the below line while replacing the IP address 10.1.1.18 with the IP address of your client:

/opt/nfs 10.1.1.18(no_root_squash,rw,sync)

Next make sure to enable 2049 port on your firewall to allow clients requests:

[nfs-server ]# firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=2049/tcp --permanent
[nfs-server ]# firewall-cmd --reload

Start rpcbind daemon and NFS server in this order:

[nfs-server ]# service rpcbind start; service nfs start

Check the NFS server status:

[nfs-server ]# service nfs status 
nfs-server.service - NFS Server
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/nfs-server.service; disabled)
   Active: active (exited) since Thu 2014-12-11 08:12:46 EST; 23s ago
  Process: 2780 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/rpc.nfsd $RPCNFSDARGS $RPCNFSDCOUNT (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 2775 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/exportfs -r (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 2773 ExecStartPre=/usr/libexec/nfs-utils/scripts/nfs-server.preconfig (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 2780 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   CGroup: /system.slice/nfs-server.service


NFS Client configuration

To be able to mount NFS exported directories on your client the following packages needs to be installed. Depending on your client’s Linux distribution the installation procedure may be different. On Redhat 7 Linux the installation steps are as follows:

[nfs-client ]# yum install nfs-utils rpcbind
[nfs-client ]# service rpcbind start

What remains is to create a mount point directory eg. /mnt/nfs and mount previously NFS exported /opt/nfs directory:

[nfs-client ]# mkdir -p /mnt/nfs
[nfs-client ]# mount 10.1.1.110:/opt/nfs /mnt/nfs/

Test correctness of our setup between NFS Server and NFS client. Create an arbitrary file within NFS mounted directory on the client side:

[nfs-client ]# cd /mnt/nfs/
[nfs-client ]# touch NFS.test
[nfs-client ]# ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 Dec 11 08:13 NFS.test

Move the the server side and check whether our newly NFS.test file exists:

[nfs-server ]# cd /opt/nfs/
[nfs-server ]# ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 Dec 11 08:13 NFS.test

Configuring permanent NFS mount

Now that we have a basic NFS configuration on RHEL7 Linux system done, next we can add additional settings such as server persistence and permanent client mount using /etc/fstab. In order to have our NFS exports permanently available after the NFS server system reboot we need to make sure that nfs service starts after reboot:

[nfs-server ]# systemctl enable nfs-server
ln -s '/usr/lib/systemd/system/nfs-server.service' '/etc/systemd/system/nfs.target.wants/nfs-server.service'

To allow client to mount NFS exported directory permanently after reboot we need to define a mount procedure within /etc/fstab config file. Open /etc/fstab file and add the following line:

10.1.1.110:/opt/nfs	/mnt/nfs	nfs	defaults 		0 0

Mount User Home Directory

In the following steps we will export a user home directory /home/rhel7. Since NFS needs full access privileges to access /home/rhel7:

[nfs-server ]# ls -ld /home/rhel7/
drwx------. 2 rhel7 rhel7 59 Jul 17 14:22 /home/rhel7/

we will bind it to a new directory:

[nfs-server ]# mkdir -p /exports/rhel7
[nfs-server ]# mount --bind /home/rhel7/ /exports/rhel7/

To make the above permanent add the following line into your /etc/fstab file:

/home/rhel7    /exports/rhel7   none    bind  0  0

Next, add another export line into /etc/exports file:

/exports/rhel7 10.1.1.18(no_root_squash,rw,sync)

Re-export all NFS directories:

[nfs-server ]# exportfs -ra

What has left is to mount the above user directory using our client host:

[nfs-client ]# mount 10.1.1.110:/exports/rhel7 /mnt/rhel7/
[nfs-client ]# cd /mnt/rhel7/
[nfs-client ]# ls
[nfs-client ]# touch RHEL7-test-nfs
[nfs-client ]# ls
RHEL7-test-nfs

Confirm that the file RHEL7-test-nfs exists on NFS server:

# ls -l /home/rhel7/
total 0
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 Dec 11 09:13 RHEL7-test-nfs