Ubuntu 18.04 - NexonHost.com

How To Install And Configure An NFS Server On Ubuntu 18.In this tutorial, we’ll go over how to set up an NFSv4 Server on Ubuntu 18.04. We’ll also show you how to mount an NFS file system on the client.NFS protocol is not encrypted by default and unlike Samba , it does not provide user authentication. Access to the server is restricted by the clients IP addresses or hostnames.Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol that allows you to share remote directories over a network. With NFS, you can mount remote directories on your system and work with the files on the remote machine as if they were local files. PrerequisitesThis example assumes that you have one server running Ubuntu 18.04 and another one running any other Linux distribution. The server and the clients should be able to communicate with each other over a private network. If your hosting provider doesn’t offer private IP addresses, you can use the public IP addresses and configure the server firewall to allow traffic on port 2049 only from trusted sources.The machines in this example have the following IPs:ADNFS Server IP: 5.254.113.196 NFS Clients IPs: From the 5.254.113.0/27 range Set Up the NFS ServerWe’ll start by installing and configuring the NFS server. Installing the NFS serverRefresh the packages index and install the NFS server package:sudo apt updatesudo apt install nfs-kernel-serverOnce the installation is completed, the NFS services will start automatically.By default, on Ubuntu 18.04 NFS version 2 is disabled. Versions 3 and 4 are enabled. You can verify that by running the following cat command :sudo cat /proc/fs/nfsd/versions-2 +3 +4 +4.1 +4.2 NFSv2 is pretty old now, and there is no reason to enable it.NFS server configuration options are set in /etc/default/nfs-kernel-server and /etc/default/nfs-common files. The default settings are sufficient in our case. Creating the file systemsWhen configuring an NFSv4 server it is a good practice is to use a global NFS root directory and bind mount the actual directories to the share mount point. In this example, we will use the /srv/nfs4 directory as NFS root.We’re going to share two directories (/var/www and /opt/backups), with different configuration settings, to better explain how the NFS mounts can be configured.Create the export filesystem using the mkdir command:sudo mkdir -p /srv/nfs4/backupssudo mkdir -p /srv/nfs4/wwwMount the actual directories:sudo mount --bind /opt/backups /srv/nfs4/backupssudo mount --bind /var/www /srv/nfs4/wwwTo make the bind mounts permanent, open the /etc/fstab file:sudo nano /etc/fstaband add the following lines:/etc/fstab/opt/backups /srv/nfs4/backups none bind 0 0 /var/www /srv/nfs4/www none bind 0 0 Exporting the file systemsThe next step is to define the file systems that will be exported by the NFS server, the shares options and the clients that are allowed to access those file systems. To do so open the /etc/exports file:sudo nano /etc/exportsThe /etc/exports file also contains comments that describe how to export a directory.In our case we need to export the www and backups directories and allow access only from clients on the 5.254.113.0/27 network: /srv/nfs4 5.254.113.0/27(rw,sync,no_subtree_check,crossmnt,fsid0) /srv/nfs4/backups 5.254.113.0/27(ro,sync,no_subtree_check) 192.168.33.3(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) /srv/nfs4/www 5.254.113.196(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) The first line contains fsid0 which define the NFS root directory /srv/nfs4. Access to this NFS volume is allowed only to the clients from the 5.254.113.0/27 subnet. The crossmnt option is required to share directories that are sub-directories of an exported directory.The second line shows how to specify multiple export rules for one filesystem. It exports the /srv/nfs4/backups directory and allows only read access to the whole 5.254.113.0/27 range and both read and write access to. The sync option tells NFS to write changes to the disk before replying.The last line should be self-explanatory. For more information about all the available options type man exports in your terminal.Save the file and export the shares:sudo exportfs -raYou need to run the command above each time you modify the /etc/exports file. If there are any errors or warnings they will be shown on the terminal.To view the current active exports and their state, use:sudo exportfs -vThe output will include all shares with their options. As you can see there are also options that we haven’t define in the /etc/exports file. Those are default options and if you want to change them you’ll need to explicitly set those options./srv/nfs4/backups 192.168.33.3(rw,wdelay,root_squash,no_subtree_check,secsys,rw,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash) /srv/nfs4/www 5.254.113.196(rw,wdelay,root_squash,no_subtree_check,secsys,rw,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash) /srv/nfs4 5.254.113.0/27(rw,wdelay,crossmnt,root_squash,no_subtree_check,fsid0,secsys,rw,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash) /srv/nfs4/backups 5.254.113.0/27(ro,wdelay,root_squash,no_subtree_check,secsys,ro,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash) On Ubuntu, root_squash is enabled by default. This is one of the most important options concerning NFS security. It prevents root users connected from the clients to have root privileges on the mounted shares. It will map root UID and GID to nobody/nogroup UID/GID.In order for the users on the client machines to have access, NFS expects the client’s user and group ID’s to match with those on the server. Another option is to use the NFSv4 idmapping feature that translates user and group IDs to names and the other way around.That’s it. At this point, you have set up an NFS server on your Ubuntu server. You can now move to the next step and configure the clients and connect to the NFS server. Firewall configurationIf you run a firewall on your network, you’ll need to add a rule that will enable traffic on the NFS port.Assuming you are using UFW to manage your firewall to allow access from the 5.254.113.0/27 subnet you need to run the following command:sudo ufw allow from 5.254.113.0/27 to any port nfsTo verify the change run:sudo ufw statusThe output should show that the traffic on port 2049 is allowed:To Action From -- ------ ---- 2049 ALLOW 5.254.113.0/27 22/tcp ALLOW Anywhere 22/tcp (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6) Set Up the NFS ClientsNow that the NFS server is setup and shares are exported the next step is to configure the clients and mount the remote file systems.You can also mount the NFS share on macOS and Windows machines but we will focus on Linux systems. Installing the NFS clientOn the client machines we need to install only the tools required to mount a remote NFS file systems.Install NFS client on Debian and UbuntuThe name of the package that includes programs for mounting NFS file systems on Debian based distributions is nfs-common. To install it run:sudo apt updatesudo apt install nfs-commonInstall NFS client on CentOS and FedoraOn Red Hat and its derivatives install the nfs-utils package:sudo yum install nfs-utils Mounting file systemsWe’ll work on the client machine with IP 5.254.113.196 which has read and write access to the /srv/nfs4/www file system and read only access to the /srv/nfs4/backups file system.Create two new directories for the mount points. You can create this directories at any location you want.sudo mkdir -p /backupssudo mkdir -p /srv/wwwMount the exported file systems with the mount command:sudo mount -t nfs -o vers4 192.168.33.10:/backups /backupssudo mount -t nfs -o vers4 192.168.33.10:/www /srv/wwwWhere 192.168.33.10 is the IP of the NFS server. You can also use the hostname instead of the IP address but it needs to be resolvable by the client machine. This is usually done by mapping the hostname to the IP in the /etc/hosts file.When mounting an NFSv4 filesystem, you need to omit the NFS root directory, so instead of /srv/nfs4/backups you need to use /backups.Verify that the remote file systems are mounted successfully using either the mount or df command:df -hThe command will print all mounted file systems. The last two lines are the mounted shares:Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 38G 1.7G 36G 5% / devtmpfs 236M 0 236M 0% /dev tmpfs 244M 0 244M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 244M 4.5M 240M 2% /run tmpfs 244M 0 244M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/sda2 1014M 87M 928M 9% /boot tmpfs 49M 0 49M 0% /run/user/1000 192.168.33.10:/backups 9.7G 1.2G 8.5G 13% /backups 192.168.33.10:/www 9.7G 1.2G 8.5G 13% /srv/wwwTo make the mounts permanent on reboot, open the /etc/fstab file:sudo nano /etc/fstaband add the following lines: 192.168.33.10:/backups /backups nfs defaults,timeo900,retrans5,_netdev 0 0 192.168.33.10:/www /srv/www nfs defaults,timeo900,retrans5,_netdev 0 0 To find more information about the available options when mounting an NFS file system, type man nfs in your terminal.Another option to mount the remote file systems is to use either the autofs tool or to create a systemd unit. Testing NFS AccessLet’s test the access to the shares by creating a new file on each of them.First, try to create a test file to the /backups directory using the touch command:sudo touch /backups/test.txtThe /backup file system is exported as read-only and as expected you will see a Permission denied error message:touch: cannot touch ‘/backups/test’: Permission denied Next, try to create a test file to the /srv/www directory as a root using the sudo command:sudo touch /srv/www/test.txtAgain, you will see Permission denied message.touch: cannot touch ‘/srv/www’: Permission denied If you recall the /var/www directory is owned by the www-data user and this share has root_squash option set which maps the root user to the nobody user and nogroup group that doesn’t have write permissions to the remote share.Assuming that you have a www-data use on the client machine with the same UID and GID as on the remote server (which should be the case if for example, you installed nginx on both machines) you can test to create a file as user www-data with:sudo -u www-data touch /srv/www/test.txtThe command will show no output which means the file was successfully created.To verify it list the files in the /srv/www directory:ls -la /srv/wwwThe output should show the newly created file:drwxr-xr-x 3 www-data www-data 4096 Jun 23 22:18 . drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jun 23 22:29 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 0 Jun 23 21:58 index.html -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 0 Jun 23 22:18 test.txt Unmounting NFS File SystemIf you no longer need the remote NFS share, you can unmount it as any other mounted file system using the umount command. For example, to unmount the /backup share you would run:sudo umount /backupsIf the mount point is defined in the /etc/fstab file, make sure you remove the line or comment it out by adding # at the beginning of the line. ConclusionIn this tutorial, we have shown you how to set up an NFS server and how to mount the remote file systems on the client machines. If you’re implementing NFS in production and sharing sensible data it is a good idea to enable kerberos authentication.As an alternative to NFS, you can use SSHFS to mount remote directories over an SSH connection. SSHFS is encrypted by default and much easier to configure and use.

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