Network file systems

    Network file systems, or NFS for short, are a way to use a filesystem on another system as if it were on your own.  The filesystem resides on another host that has granted your host permission to mount it, by a process called exporting, and your system uses the network to make it seem like any other filesystem on your system.  There are two parts to NFS, exporting a filesystem on the NFS server so that another host or hosts can use it, and then mounting an NFS filesystem on the client system.  This is easily done as of IRIX 6.5 with the System Manager, Networking and Communications.  I recommend using it for both parts of the process.

Exporting an NFS filesystem is pretty easy.  There are some technical considerations that come into play, but you can usually wait til later to understand them if you keep your setup simple.  Let's say you are on a host "apple" and have an option disk, /users, you'd like to make available to the host "banana".

Exporting an NFS filesystem:

  1. Make sure you have NFS installed:  "showprods nfs.sw.nfs"
  2. Activate NFS: "chkconfig nfs on"
  3. Cycle the network script: "/etc/init.d/network stop" and then "/etc/init.d/network start"
  4. Make sure banana has an entry in your /etc/hosts file.
  5. Edit /etc/exports.  Add a line, "/users    -rw    -access=banana".  Save /etc/exports and exit.
  6. Enter "exportfs -a" to read in your change.  Now go to banana


Mounting an NFS filesystem: I assume banana is another SGI.

  1. Make sure you have NFS installed:  "showprods nfs.sw.nfs"
  2. Activate NFS: "chkconfig nfs on"
  3. Cycle the network script: "/etc/init.d/network stop" and then "/etc/init.d/network start"
  4. Make sure apple has an entry in your /etc/hosts file.
  5. If you don't already have a directory to mount /users on apple, make it now: "mkdir -p full_path_name_of_directory"; set permissions if needed.
  6. Edit /etc/fstab.  Add a line "apple:/users    /users nfs bg,soft 0 0"
  7. Enter "mount -a" to mount the remote filesystem
  8. Confirm it worked with "df"
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last updated 1/31/00 by Martin McCormick, martinm@sas.upenn.edu