How to setup NFS Server on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7

Here are my demo nodes details.

NFS Server IP Address

192.168.12.5

NFS Client IP Address

192.168.12.7

Usage of NFS

File / Folder sharing between Linux systems

Allows to mount remote filesystems locally

Allows applications to share configuration and data files with multiple nodes.

Allows to have updated files across the share.

Install NFS Server

We need to install NFS packages on NFS server, install it using the following command.

[root@server ~]# yum install nfs-utils

Once the packages are installed, enable and start NFS services.

systemctl enable rpcbind

systemctl enable nfs-server

systemctl enable nfs-lock

systemctl enable nfs-idmap

systemctl start rpcbind

systemctl start nfs-server

systemctl start nfs-lock

systemctl start nfs-idmap

Create NFS Share

Create a directory to share with client servers. Here I will be creating a new directory named “nfsfileshare” in “/” partition.

Note: You can also share your existing directory with NFS.

[root@server ~]# mkdir /nfsfileshare

Allow client servers to read and write to the created directory.

[root@server ~]# chmod 777 /nfsfileshare/

We have to modify “/etc/exports“file to make an entry of directory “/nfsfileshare” that you want to share.

[root@server ~]# vi /etc/exports

/nfsfileshare 192.168.12.7(rw,sync,no_root_squash)

/nfsfileshare : shared directory

[root@server ~]# exportfs -r

Configure NFS client

We need to install NFS packages on NFS client-server to mount remote filesystem, install NFS packages using below command.

[root@client ~]# yum -y install nfs-utils

Once the packages are installed, enable and start NFS services.

systemctl enable rpcbind

systemctl start rpcbind

Mount NFS shares on clients

Before mounting the NFS share, we need to check the available shares on the NFS server. To do that,  run the following command on the client-server.

[root@client ~]# showmount -e 192.168.12.5

Export list for 192.168.12.5:

/nfsfileshare 192.168.12.7

[root@client ~]# mkdir /mnt/nfsfileshare

[root@client ~]# mount 192.168.12.5:/nfsfileshare /mnt/nfsfileshare

[root@client ~]# df -hT

Filesystem                 Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

devtmpfs                   devtmpfs  478M     0  478M   0% /dev

tmpfs                      tmpfs     489M     0  489M   0% /dev/shm

tmpfs                      tmpfs     489M  620K  488M   1% /run

tmpfs                      tmpfs     489M     0  489M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup

/dev/mapper/fedora-root    xfs        18G  1.3G   17G   8% /

tmpfs                      tmpfs     489M  4.0K  489M   1% /tmp

/dev/sda1                  ext4      477M   93M  355M  21% /boot

tmpfs                      tmpfs      98M     0   98M   0% /run/user/0

192.168.12.5:/nfsfileshare nfs4       50G  858M   50G   2% /mnt/nfsfileshare

Automount NFS Shares

To mount the shares automatically on every reboot, need to modify “/etc/fstab” file of your client system.

Add “green” line at the end.

[root@client ~]# vi /etc/fstab

#

# /etc/fstab

# Created by anaconda on Tue May 22 11:30:49 2018

#

# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'

# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info

#

/dev/mapper/fedora-root /                       xfs     defaults        0 0

UUID=f748af6c-0de9-4dc0-98e6-959ffc400f2f /boot                   ext4    defaults        1 2

/dev/mapper/fedora-swap swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

192.168.12.5:/nfsfileshare/ /mnt/nfsfileshare nfs rw,sync,hard,intr 0 0

save and close the file.

Reboot the client machine and check the share whether it is automatically mounted or not.

[root@client ~]# reboot