Getting NFS to work on Linux

Here's some information I posted on comp.os.linux.networking about getting nfs to work. For reasons I still don't understand, we had to make an entry in /etc/hosts.allow...

In article <567h06$2jr@server.umt.edu>,
Borries Demeler  wrote:
> I am trying to NFS mount a remote linux fs by nfs. The filesystem
> is exported as such on the remote machine, host1, to local machine, 
> host2:
> 
> /download     host2(rw)
> 
> in /etc/exports
> 
> When I use:
> 
> "mount -t nfs host2:/download /download"
> 
> on host2, I get this error:
> 
> mount clntudp_create: RPC: Program not registered.
> 
> On the remote system the following deamons are running:
> 
> /usr/sbin/rpc.portmap
> /usr/sbin/rpc.mountd
> /usr/sbin/rpc.nfsd
> 
> Any clues what is causing this error?

I assume you've already tried HUPing mountd after making any changes to
/etc/exports on the server.  Also, I think mountd needs to be running
on the client.  And on some pre-2.0 linux systems, I've found that
you have to reboot the machine in order for these changes to take effect.

Finally, check your /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny.  We found that
we had to add in the client specifically before we could get nfs to work.

If anyone understands why, I'd love to hear it.  I was under the
impression that nfs was an rpc service and thus shouldn't be affected
by /etc/hosts.* which is used with inetd.

BTW, the "Red Book" (_Unix System Administration Handbook_, by Nemeth,
Snyder, Seebass, & Hein) has a nice discussion on nfs (and lots of other
stuff).

-- 
Omar Thameen                                           (                  )
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