NFS

From OLPC

The Network File System lets you use files on another machine as if they were actually on your XO-1 laptop.

[edit] Installation

Installation consists of two steps:

• adding a package to your XO-1 laptop, and
• adding an authorization line to the NFS server

For the sake of being specific, the procedures below assume

• your XO-1 laptop's IP Address is 192.168.1.250;
• the IP Address of the NFS server is 192.168.1.2;
• you want /home/johndoe on the NFS server to be visible as /mnt on your XO-1 laptop.

To find your XO-1's actual IP Address, do this in Terminal Activity:

su -
ifconfig
exit

Look at the lines that start with inet addr:. One will show 127.0.0.1; ignore this one. Likely ignore the one for the mesh network, named msh0. The one that's left will be the one you want to use.

[edit] Installing NFS capability on your XO-1

On your XO-1 laptop, in Terminal Activity, install the nfs-utils package:

su -
yum install nfs-utils
exit

This will cause yum to install the nfs-utils package and several other packages it requires. Reply y when it asks you for permission.

A reboot might be needed after the install, I had trouble with rpcbind and thus rcp.statd not starting up and NFS mounts thus fail with: "mount.nfs: rpc.statd is not running but is required for remote locking". Doing a:

service rpcbind restart

service nfslock restart

service nfs restart

might also be enough to fix this.

-- Grumbel

[edit] Authorizing your XO-1 for NFS

On your NFS server, add a line to the /etc/exports file and reload nfs:

su -
echo "/home/johndoe 192.168.1.250(ro,no_root_squash)" >> /etc/exports
service nfs reload
exit

The items in parentheses are options. The value ro means read-only; your server will not allow the XO to modify files in the /home/johndoe directory. The value no_root_squash means your server will skip numeric-userid checking. For a full explanation, do man exports on your NFS server.

[edit] Mounting

You use the mount command as usual to mount files that reside physically on an NFS server, mount device mountpoint, but the device parameter has a special form: host:directory, that is, the NFS server's hostname or IP Address, a colon, and the directory to be mounted:

mount nfs-server.mynetwork.com:directory mount-point

[edit] Mounting /home/johndoe on your XO-1

On your XO-1 laptop, in Terminal Activity, mount the remote directory:

su -
mount 192.168.1.2:/home/johndoe /mnt
exit

[edit] Using NFS mounts

Refer to files and directories of a NFS-mounted filesystem by mount-point, just as if they resided on your XO-1 laptop.

[edit] Using NFS-mounted files on your XO-1

Suppose that /home/johndoe/public_html/index.html is the index to John Doe's webpage. In the Browse Activity, give this as the location you wish to browse to:

file:///mnt/public_html/index.html