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><H1
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><A
NAME="CLIENT">4. Setting up an NFS Client</H1
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="REMOTEMOUNT">4.1. Mounting remote directories</H2
><P
> Before beginning, you should double-check to make sure your mount
program is new enough (version 2.10m if you want to use Version 3
NFS), and that the client machine supports NFS mounting, though most
standard distributions do. If you are using a 2.2 or later kernel
with the <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>/proc</TT
> filesystem you can check the latter by reading the
file <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>/proc/filesystems</TT
> and making sure there is a line containing
nfs. If not, typing <TT
CLASS="USERINPUT"
><B
>insmod nfs</B
></TT
> may make it
magically appear if NFS has been compiled as a module; otherwise,
you will need to build (or download) a kernel that has
NFS support built in. In general, kernels that do not have NFS
compiled in will give a very specific error when the
<B
CLASS="COMMAND"
>mount</B
> command below is run.
</P
><P
> To begin using machine as an NFS client, you will need the portmapper
running on that machine, and to use NFS file locking, you will
also need <B
CLASS="COMMAND"
>rpc.statd</B
> and <B
CLASS="COMMAND"
>rpc.lockd</B
>
running on both the client and the server. Most recent distributions
start those services by default at boot time; if yours doesn't, see
<A
HREF="server.html#CONFIG"
>Section 3.2</A
> for information on how to start them up.
</P
><P
> With <B
CLASS="COMMAND"
>portmap</B
>, <B
CLASS="COMMAND"
>lockd</B
>,
and <B
CLASS="COMMAND"
>statd</B
> running, you should now be able to
mount the remote directory from your server just the way you mount
a local hard drive, with the mount command. Continuing our example
from the previous section, suppose our server above is called
<EM
>master.foo.com</EM
>,and we want to mount the <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>/home</TT
> directory on
<EM
>slave1.foo.com</EM
>. Then, all we have to do, from the root prompt on
<EM
>slave1.foo.com</EM
>, is type:
<TABLE
BORDER="1"
BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0"
WIDTH="100%"
><TR
><TD
><FONT
COLOR="#000000"
><PRE
CLASS="SCREEN"
> # mount master.foo.com:/home /mnt/home
</PRE
></FONT
></TD
></TR
></TABLE
>
and the directory <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>/home</TT
> on master will appear as the directory
<TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>/mnt/home</TT
> on <EM
>slave1</EM
>. (Note that
this assumes we have created the directory <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>/mnt/home</TT
>
as an empty mount point beforehand.)
</P
><P
> If this does not work, see the Troubleshooting section (<A
HREF="troubleshooting.html"
>Section 7</A
>).
</P
><P
> You can get rid of the file system by typing
<TABLE
BORDER="1"
BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0"
WIDTH="100%"
><TR
><TD
><FONT
COLOR="#000000"
><PRE
CLASS="SCREEN"
> # umount /mnt/home
</PRE
></FONT
></TD
></TR
></TABLE
>
just like you would for a local file system.
</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="BOOT-TIME-NFS">4.2. Getting NFS File Systems to Be Mounted at Boot Time</H2
><P
> NFS file systems can be added to your <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>/etc/fstab</TT
> file the same way
local file systems can, so that they mount when your system starts
up. The only difference is that the file system type will be
set to <TT
CLASS="USERINPUT"
><B
>nfs</B
></TT
> and the dump and fsck order (the last two entries) will
have to be set to zero. So for our example above, the entry in
<TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>/etc/fstab</TT
> would look like:
<TABLE
BORDER="0"
BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0"
WIDTH="100%"
><TR
><TD
><FONT
COLOR="#000000"
><PRE
CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING"
> # device mountpoint fs-type options dump fsckorder
...
master.foo.com:/home /mnt nfs rw 0 0
...
</PRE
></FONT
></TD
></TR
></TABLE
>
</P
><P
> See the man pages for <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>fstab</TT
> if you are unfamiliar
with the syntax of this file. If you are using an automounter such as
amd or autofs, the options in the corresponding fields of your mount
listings should look very similar if not identical.
</P
><P
> At this point you should have NFS working, though a few tweaks
may still be necessary to get it to work well. You should also
read <A
HREF="security.html"
>Section 6</A
> to be sure your setup is reasonably secure.
</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="MOUNTOPTIONS">4.3. Mount options</H2
><DIV
CLASS="SECT3"
><H3
CLASS="SECT3"
><A
NAME="SOFT-VS-HARD">4.3.1. Soft vs. Hard Mounting</H3
><P
> There are some options you should consider adding at once. They
govern the way the NFS client handles a server crash or network
outage. One of the cool things about NFS is that it can handle this
gracefully. If you set up the clients right. There are two distinct
failure modes:
</P
><P
> <DIV
CLASS="GLOSSLIST"
><DL
><DT
><B
>soft</B
></DT
><DD
><P
> If a file request fails, the NFS client will report an
error to the process on the client machine requesting the file
access. Some programs can handle this with composure, most
won't. We do not recommend using this setting; it is a recipe
for corrupted files and lost data. You should especially not
use this for mail disks --- if you value your mail, that is.
</P
></DD
><DT
><B
>hard</B
></DT
><DD
><P
> The program accessing a file on a NFS mounted file system
will hang when the server crashes. The process cannot be
interrupted or killed (except by a "sure kill") unless you also
specify <TT
CLASS="USERINPUT"
><B
>intr</B
></TT
>. When the
NFS server is back online the program will
continue undisturbed from where it was. We recommend using
<TT
CLASS="USERINPUT"
><B
>hard,intr</B
></TT
> on all NFS mounted file systems.
</P
></DD
></DL
></DIV
>
</P
><P
> Picking up the from previous example, the fstab entry would now
look like:
<TABLE
BORDER="0"
BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0"
WIDTH="100%"
><TR
><TD
><FONT
COLOR="#000000"
><PRE
CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING"
> # device mountpoint fs-type options dump fsckord
...
master.foo.com:/home /mnt/home nfs rw,hard,intr 0 0
...
</PRE
></FONT
></TD
></TR
></TABLE
>
</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT3"
><H3
CLASS="SECT3"
><A
NAME="BLOCKSIZE">4.3.2. Setting Block Size to Optimize Transfer Speeds</H3
><P
> The <TT
CLASS="USERINPUT"
><B
>rsize</B
></TT
> and <TT
CLASS="USERINPUT"
><B
>wsize</B
></TT
> mount
options specify the size of the chunks of data that the client and
server pass back and forth to each other.
</P
><P
> The defaults may be too big or to small; there is no size that works
well on all or most setups. On the one hand, some combinations of
Linux kernels and network cards (largely on older machines) cannot
handle blocks that large. On the other hand, if they can handle
larger blocks, a bigger size might be faster.
</P
><P
> Getting the block size right is an important factor in performance and
is a must if you are planning to use the NFS server in a production
environment. See <A
HREF="performance.html"
>Section 5</A
> for details.
</P
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