Re: [tlug] Networking two Linux computers harder than Linux toWindows?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Dave M G writes:

 > exportfs: /etc/exports [2]: Neither 'subtree_check' or 
 > 'no_subtree_check' specified for export "192.168.0.3:/home/fileserver".

 > Those OK notes look encouraging.

Actually, they only tell you that the server has started, but not that
anything is properly exported.  However, you've already confirmed that
192.168.0.3 is the client machine's address, and that everything else
you can check is kosher.  So the warning message would seem that
/home/fileserver has been properly exported.

 > The thing is, is there a command I should be running on the client?

There are commands you *can* run, but as Patrick says, all necessary
programs should be run automatically by mount.

NFS is actually a rather complicated protocol.  There are several
ports that must be managed by the server, in particular the RPC
portmapper and also a user id server.  However, presumably all this is
done by the command to run the server.

I don't know if the kernel server needs the portmapper running, or how
it does access control.  However, when I was using NFS I used the
client daemon "rpc.nfsd", which does require several auxiliary
daemons, including "rpc.mountd", "rpc.ugidd", and "portmap".

The portmap daemon apparently does access control using the
tcpwrappers facility, so you may need entries for your gf's machine in
/etc/hosts.allow.  See "man portmap" for more information.  "ps ax |
grep 'portmap|nfs|mountd|ugidd'" will tell you if the portmapper and
other daemons are running.

(N.B. since you're using the kernel nfs server, you may or may not
need some or all of those, since the nfs server may provide some of
the other services for you.)

 > > This is bad, it should only take a couple of seconds to determine that
 > > NFS server is or is not running.  How long did you wait?

 > Ages. As I'm writing this it's still waiting, and has been for a good 
 > ten minutes.

Your word "ages" is quite justified here.  That's way too long.

I wonder if you've got a misconfigured routing or firewall.  I don't
know for sure, but I would hope that a properly configured server
would say "connection refused" and mount would fail quickly.  The fact
that it hangs suggests that it keeps trying on a long timeout.