Redhat:NFS Client

NFS Mount Options

The first thing to check is the list of currently mounted directories. The showmount command is used for this.

showmount # list mount directories on the client system
showmount -d <servername> # list exported directories from server
showmount -e <servername> # list exported directories from server with extra detail

If no output is shown check the status of nfs.

fstab

The fstab file allow NFS shares to be mounted when the system boots up. The example mounts bills home directory onto the client system.

There are several options that can be applied to control how the share is mounted

172.16.1.1:/home/bill       /home/bill   nfs     defaults        0       0

Diskless Clients

NFS can be used mount files systems where the OS is not stored locally on the system.

The diskless system may use a floppy of PROM to start the boot process, beofre embedded commands mount the NFS shares for the root, swap and other directories.

Soft Mounting

When mounting an NFS share the soft option can be applied.

The Soft option can be used to prevent NFS shares from hanging if the server goes offline. The soft option cause the NFS share to fail isntead, but this can lead long running processes to fail due to a temporary network failure.

The timeo option sets the timout option in tenths of a second. This can allow for temporary network failures.

Client NFS Status

The files documenting the current status of the NFS client are generally found in two directories:

• /var/lib/nfs
• /proc/fs/nfsd

The two main files to check are:

• etab - full description of mounted directories
• rmtab - state of mounted shares