NFS crib

You need several daemons to support NFS activities. These daemons can support both NFS client and NFS server activity, NFS server activity alone, or logging of the NFS server activity. To start the NFS server daemons or to specify the number of concurrent NFS requests that can be handled by the nfsd daemon, use the /etc/rc3.d/S15nfs.server script. There are six daemons that support NFS:

mountd Handles file system mount requests from remote systems, and provides access control (server)
nfsd Handles client file system requests (both client and server)
statd Works with the lockd daemon to provide crash recovery functions for the lock manager (server)
lockd Supports record locking operations on NFS files
nfslogd Provides filesystem logging. Runs only if one or more filesystems is mounted with log attribute.

You can detect most NFS problems from console messages or from certain symptoms that appear on a client system. Some common errors are:

The rpcbind failure error incorrect host Internet address or server overload

The server not responding error network connection or server is down

The NFS client fails a reboot error a client is requesting an NFS mount using an entry in the /etc/vfstab file, specifying a foreground mount from a non-operational NFS server.

The service not responding error an accessible server is not running the NFS server daemons.

The program not registered error an accessible server is not running the mountd daemon.

The stale file handle error [file moved on the server]. To solve the stale NFS file handle error condition, unmount and mount the resource again on the client.

The unknown host error the host name of the server on the client is missing from the hosts table.

The mount point error check that the mount point exists on the client

The no such file error unknown file name on the server

No such file or directory the directory does not exists on the server



NFS Server Commands

share Makes a local directory on an NFS server available for mounting. Without parameters displays the contents of the
/etc/dfs/sharetab file.
unshare Makes a previously available directory unavailable for client side mount operations.
shareall Reads and executes share statements in the /etc/dfs/dfstab file.
unshareall Makes previously shared resources unavailable.
dfshares Lists available shared resources from a remote or local NFS server.
dfmounts Displays a list of NFS server directories that are currently mounted.