Set up an NFS server

NFS is Sun Microsystems' Network File System. It was the industry standard in networked file-systems for a time, and is still in use. Linux systems can export directories via an NFS server, or mount directories exported by other NFS servers. nfs is as easy to use as to abuse; it lacks almost all modern security features. For most uses it is far more advisable to use samba instead.

Your NFS shares are configured in /etc/exports. To see all NFS exports of a server localhost, use showmount -e localhost

= Set up an NFS server = You want to share folders of your computer in the network. So, your computer plays the role of the NFS server. The network drives are exported by the server, that's how NFS calls it. The following is an example how you get a folder /public that is shared in your network. It uses SUSE Linux 10, but the process for other distributions should be similar. It will last about 10 minutes. We use server as hostname for the computer exporting directories.

To do this, mkdir /public /public/  *(rw,no_root_squash,sync) /etc/init.d/nfs-user-server start || /etc/init.d/nfsserver start This command makes sure your nfs server gets started, no matter if your distribution names its startup script "nfs-user-server" or "nfsserver".
 * Have NFS installed as described at installing software
 * Create the directory /public (the name /public will be used here as an example)
 * Edit /etc/exports, add the line
 * Start the NFS-Server:

Verify the result
Issue on your computer: showmount -e 127.0.0.1. The result will be like this: Export list for 127.0.0.1: /public * By this command, you can see that a share /public is available on your computer, so it is an NFS-Server.

Use the network drive
To use the network drive on a client computer, go there and try if you can reach the NFS server: ping server Mount the server's export to (as an example) /mnt/nfs mkdir -p /mnt/nfs mount server:/public /mnt/nfs You can make this mount persistant by using the fstab.