RHEL7: Provide NFS network shares suitable for group collaboration.

Note: This is an RHCE 7 exam objective.

Configuration Procedure

Install the NFS packages:

# yum groupinstall -y "file-server"

Add a new service to the firewall:

# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=nfs
Success

Reload the firewall configuration:

# firewall-cmd --reload
Success

Activate the NFS services at boot:

# systemctl enable rpcbind
# systemctl enable nfs-server
# systemctl enable nfs-lock

Note: With the RHEL 7.3 release, the Systemd init system is able to use aliases. For example, the nfs.service is a symbolic link/alias to the nfs-server.service service file. This enables, for example, using the systemctl status nfs.service command instead of systemctl status nfs-server.service. Previously, running the systemctl enable command using an alias instead of the real service name failed with an error.

Start the NFS services:

# systemctl start rpcbind
# systemctl start nfs-server
# systemctl start nfs-lock

Create a directory to export (here /shared):

# mkdir /shared

Create a dedicated group (here called sharedgrp):

# groupadd -g 60000 sharedgrp

Assign this group to the new directory:

# chgrp sharedgrp /shared

Define permissions:

# chmod 2770 /shared

Edit the /etc/exports file and add the following lines with the name (or IP address) of the client(s):

/shared client(rw,no_root_squash)

Export the directories:

# exportfs -avr
# systemctl restart nfs-server

Note1: The client needs to have access to the same group (via LDAP) and be a member of this group. Note2: The last command shouldn’t be necessary in the future. But, for the time being, it avoids rebooting.