18.6.1. Exporting or Sharing NFS File Systems

18.6.1. Exporting or Sharing NFS File Systems

Sharing or serving files from an NFS server is known as exporting the directories. The NFS Server Configuration Tool can be used to configure a system as an NFS server.

To add an NFS share, click the Add button. The dialog box shown in Figure 18.3, “Add Share” appears.

The Basic tab requires the following information:

Add Share

Add NFS Share

Figure 18.3. Add Share

The General Options tab allows the following options to be configured:

NFS General Options

General Options

Figure 18.4. NFS General Options

NFS User Access

User Access

Figure 18.5. NFS User Access

The User Access tab allows the following options to be configured:

To edit an existing NFS share, select the share from the list, and click the Properties button. To delete an existing NFS share, select the share from the list, and click the Delete button.

After clicking OK to add, edit, or delete an NFS share from the list, the changes take place immediately — the server daemon is restarted and the old configuration file is saved as /etc/exports.bak. The new configuration is written to /etc/exports.

The NFS Server Configuration Tool reads and writes directly to the /etc/exports configuration file. Thus, the file can be modified manually after using the tool, and the tool can be used after modifying the file manually (provided the file was modified with correct syntax).

The next this section discusses manually editing /etc/exports and using the /usr/sbin/exportfs command to export NFS file systems.