Using NFSv4

You should have already built and installed the kernel and user utilities and setup krb5.

The following steps need only be done once:

• Create the /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery/ directory:

  mkdir /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery/

• Add the following lines to /etc/fstab to mount the rpc_pipefs and nfsd filesystems automatically:

  rpc_pipefs	/var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs	rpc_pipefs	defaults	0	0
  nfsd	/proc/fs/nfsd	nfsd	defaults	0	0
  

  and create the mountpoint for rpc_pipefs, and mount both filesystems:

  mkdir /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs
  mount rpc_pipefs
  mount nfsd
  

  Modify the fstab line for filesystem you plan to export on the server to add the "acl" option to the mount options.
• Create a directory to export on the server:

  mkdir /export
  chmod a+rwxt /export
  

The following steps need to be performed on every boot; this should really be done by init scripts. The necessary init scripts already exist in recent Fedora distributions. See also debian/nfs-common.init and debian/nfs-kernel-server.init in the patched nfs-utils tarball for example init scripts.

• On your server, run rpc.mountd, rpc.svcgssd, rpc.idmapd, and rpc.nfsd:

  rpc.mountd
  rpc.idmapd
  rpc.svcgssd
  rpc.nfsd 8
  

• On the client, run rpc.gssd and rpc.idmapd:

  rpc.gssd -m
  rpc.idmapd
  

• Export your server directory (in this case, to anyone, using any authentication flavor), by adding the following lines to /etc/exports

  /export  *(rw,fsid=0,insecure,no_subtree_check)
  /export  gss/krb5(rw,fsid=0,insecure,no_subtree_check)
  /export  gss/krb5i(rw,fsid=0,insecure,no_subtree_check)
  /export  gss/krb5p(rw,fsid=0,insecure,no_subtree_check)
  

  and then running

  exportfs -r
  

  (Note that if your server is connected to the internet the first line will give everyone in the world read and write access to /export and (with a little work) to anything on the same disk partition as /export! See the exports man page for more information.)

To access this export from a client:

• Create a mountpoint on your client:

  mkdir /mnt/nfs4/
  

  and mount the server:

  mount -t nfs4 yourserver:/ /mnt/nfs4/
  

  or, to mount with kerberos,

  mount -t nfs4 -o sec=krb5 yourserver:/ /mnt/nfs4/
  

• Play around with the mounted filesystem:

  cd /mnt/nfs4/
  echo "Hello World!" >FOO
  cat FOO
  getfacl FOO
  

  etc.

Depending on your distribution of linux you may have to add nfs4 to the list of filesystems to exclude from the nightly updatedb run. For example in Ubuntu you would add "nfs4" to the PRUNEFS list in /etc/updatedb.conf.

Exporting and mounting can be automated using /etc/fstab and /etc/exports; see the man pages fstab(5) and exports(5). Note that exports behave quite differently under v4 and v3, so some additional explanation may be called for:

NFSv4 exports on linux

NFSv4 no longer has a separate "mount" protocol. Instead of exporting a number of distinct exports, an NFSv4 client sees the NFSv4 server's exports as existing inside a single filesystem, called the nfsv4 "pseudofilesystem".

On the current linux implementation, the pseudofilesystem is a single real filesystem, identified at export with the fsid=0 option.

In the example above, we exported only a single filesystem, which the client mounted as "/". You can provide clients with multiple filesystems to mount, producing NFSv3-like-behavior, by creative use of mount --bind. For example, you could export /usr/local/bin to clients as /bin and /usr/local/etc as /etc as follows:

mkdir /export
mkdir /export/bin
mkdir /export/etc
mount --bind /usr/local/bin /export/bin
mount --bind /usr/local/etc /export/etc
exportfs -ofsid=0,insecure,no_subtree_check *:/export
exportfs -orw,nohide,insecure,no_subtree_check *:/export/bin
exportfs -orw,nohide,insecure,no_subtree_check *:/export/etc

Note that the paths returned by the "showmount" program are meaningful only to clients using nfs versions 2 and 3; in the above example, "showmount" will list the paths /export, /export/bin/, and /export/etc, but nfsv4 clients should mount yourserver:/, yourserver:/bin, or yourserver:/etc.

Mounting and exporting krb5

To mount a filesystem using krb5, provide the "-osec=krb5" option to mount.

To export a filesystem using krb5, add the export option "sec=krb5". (Note: if your kernel is older than 2.6.23, or nfs-utils older than 1.1.1, you will instead need to export to a special client named "gss/krb5".)

There are two additional modes which provide increase security, at the expense of some performance: krb5i provides integrity protection for all nfs traffic, and krb5p in addition encrypts all traffic. You can replace "krb5" by "krb5i" or "krb5p" in the above to use those modes, and on the server side you can allow the client to use of any of them with an export option like "sec=krb5:krb5i:krb5p". (See the exports(5) man page for details.)

All of these options should also work for NFSv3 exports and mounts.