What is NFS server

Network File Sharing

In an enterprise computing environment, it is common to share files between computers or allow several users to access the same set of files on a central server and have all changes be visible to all users immediately. In a pure UNIX environment, including those consisting solely of Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, this can be achieved via Network File System (NFS). If sharing files between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows systems is desired, Samba can be used to achieve connectivity.

Network File System

NFS, or Network File System, is a server-client protocol for sharing files between computers on a common network. It is available on a variety of UNIX-based operating systems, not just Linux. The server and client do not have to use the same operating system. The client system just needs to be running an NFS client compatible with the NFS server.

The NFS server exports one or more directories to the client systems, and the client systems mount one or more of the shared directories to local directories called mount points. After the share is mounted, all I/O operations are written back to the server, and all clients notice the change as if it occurred on the local filesystem. A manual refresh is not needed because the client accesses the remote filesystem as if it were local. Access is granted or restricted by client IP addresses.

One advantage of NFS is that the client mounts the remote filesystem to a directory thus allowing users to access it in the same method used to access local files. Furthermore, because access is granted by IP address, a username and

password are not required. However, there are security risks to consider because the NFS server knows nothing about the users on the client system. The files from the NFS server retain their file permissions, user ID, and group ID when mounted. If the client uses a different set of user and group IDs, file ownership will change.

For example, if a file is owned by user ID 500 on the NFS server, the file is exported to the clients with that same user ID. If user ID 500 maps to the user bsf on the NFS server but maps to the user akf on the remote client, user akf will have access to the file on the remote client. Thus, it is crucial that the NFS server and all its clients use the same user database so the user and group IDs are identical no matter which machine is used to access the files. The administrator can assign identical user and group IDs on systems on the network, but this can be a tedious and time-consuming task if the network has more than a few users.