NFS Client Configuration in Linux

Setting up a client to use NFS is relatively simple when you have the NFS server in place. Let’s set up the Client01 system to use a share on the RHEL01 NFS server.

Task 1: Installing NFS Client Services

Step 1. To start, you need to install the required packages:
# yum install -y nfs-utils nfs4-acl-tools
These two packages include the necessary files for you to connect to the NFS server and use the exported resources. On the client side, you need only the rpcbind service running to mount NFS resources on the server.
Step 2. Ensure that the required service is set to start on boot:

# chkconfig rpcbind on

You can now create some directories to hold the NFS shares on the local system.
Step 3. Create two local directories:

# mkdir /mnt/{company_data,temp}

Step 4. Mount the company_data NFS share:

# mount –t nfs 172.168.1.1:/opt/company_data /mnt/company_data

Assuming your permissions and security restrictions are correctly in place, you should now be able to move into the /mnt/company_data directory and actually access the NFS share on the server.

Task 2: Mounting NFS shares automatically during booting:

If you don’t want to always mount NFS shares after your system has booted, you can, of course, add an entry to the /etc/fstab file to have them mounted automatically at system boot.
Step 1. In the /etc/fstab, add the following line:

# nano /etc/fstab
rhel01:/opt/company_data /opt/company_data nfs
rw,sync 0 0

Step 2. Save your file and exit.
Step 3. Using the mount command, you can verify that the resource was mounted properly:

# mount | grep nfs
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
nfsd on /proc/fs/nfsd type nfsd (rw)
172.168.1.1:/home on /mnt/temp type nfs
(rw,vers=4,addr=172.168.1.1,clientaddr=172.168.1.10)
172.168.1.1:/opt/company_data on /mnt/company_data type nfs
(rw,vers=4,addr=172.168.1.1,clientaddr=172.168.1.10)

The remote resource should now be available just as if it were a local resource.