27.3 Importing File Systems Manually
File systems can also be imported manually from an NFS server. The
prerequisite for this is a running RPC port mapper, which can be started
by entering rcrpcbind start as
root. Once this prerequisite is
met, remote exported file systems can be mounted in the file system just
like local hard disks using the mount command in the
following manner:
mount host:remote-path local-path
If user directories from the machine nfs.example.com, for example, should be
imported, use the following command:
mount nfs.example.com:/home /home
27.3.1 Using the Automount Service
As well as the regular local device mounts, the autofs daemon can be
used to mount remote file systems automatically too. To do this, add the
following entry in the your /etc/auto.master file:
/nfsmounts /etc/auto.nfs
Now the /nfsmounts directory acts as a root for all
the NFS mounts on the client if the auto.nfs file
is completed appropriately. The name auto.nfs is
chosen for sake of convenience—you can choose any name. In the
selected file (create it if it does not exist), add entries for all the
NFS mounts as in the following example:
localdata -fstype=nfs server1:/data
nfs4mount -fstype=nfs4 server2:/
Activate the settings with rcautofs start. For this
example, /nfsmounts/localdata, the
/data directory of server1, is then mounted with
NFS and /nfsmounts/nfs4mount from server2 is
mounted with NFSv4.
If the /etc/auto.master file is edited while the
service autofs is running, the automounter must be restarted for the
changes to take effect. Do this with rcautofs
restart.
27.3.2 Manually Editing /etc/fstab
A typical NFSv3 mount entry in /etc/fstab looks
like this:
nfs.example.com:/data /local/path nfs rw,noauto 0 0
NFSv4 mounts may also be added to the /etc/fstab
file manually. For these mounts, use nfs4 instead of
nfs in the third column and make sure that the remote
file system is given as / after the
nfs.example.com: in the first column. A sample line
for an NFSv4 mount in /etc/fstab looks like this:
nfs.example.com:/ /local/pathv4 nfs4 rw,noauto 0 0
The noauto option prevents the file system from being
mounted automatically at start up. If you want to mount the respective
file system manually, it is possible to shorten the command for mounting
and it is only needed to provide the mount point as in:
mount /local/path
Note, that if you do not enter the noauto option, the
initialization scripts of the system will handle the mount of those file
systems at start up.
