Configuring NFS between CentOS server and Mac OS X Leopard client

After realizing how slow SMB is between my QNAP NAS and my MBP is, I’ve decided to turn my CentOS 5 box into a NFS server to improve on my network speeds (mainly to view large iPhoto library archives over the network with a little less pain). Here are the steps I took to get NFS working between my CentOS 5 server and MBP client:

Server Configuration

1. Format 2nd 80GB HDD as a vfat partition

$ mkfs.vfat -c -F 32 /dev/sdb1

2. Create mount point and mount new vfat partition (I did this via /etc/fstab)

$ cat /etc/fstab
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/sdb1        /media/disk1        vfat    defaults,uid=501,gid=20    0 0

NOTE: The UID and GID need to be the same as the user on the Mac that you’ll be mounting the NFS share with. This is so that the user will have sufficient privileges to write to the disk. In my case the Mac user’s UID/GID is 501/20.

3. Create /etc/exports file

$ cat /etc/exports
/media/disk1/pictures 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0(rw,no_root_squash,sync,insecure,anonuid=501,anongid=20)

Again, note the anonuid is 501, and the anongid is 20, same as the Mac user’s UID/GID. Also, the ‘insecure’ option seems to be required as well when NFS mounting from a Mac.

4. Config /etc/hosts.allow file

$ cat /etc/hosts.allow
#
#        hosts.allow This file describes the names of the hosts which are
#        allowed to use the local INET services, as decided
#        by the '/usr/sbin/tcpd' server.
#
portmap: 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0

5. Configure NFS services to start on bootup

$ chkconfig nfs on
$ chkconfig --list nfs
nfs                0:off    1:off    2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

6. Start NFS daemons

$ service nfs start
Starting NFS services:                                   [  OK  ]
Starting NFS quotas:                                     [  OK  ]
Starting NFS daemon:                                     [  OK  ]
Starting NFS mountd:                                     [  OK  ]

Client  Configuration (on MBP)

1. Determine Mac user’s UID/GID and make sure NFS server’s /etc/exports and /etc/fstab files reflect the same UID/GID

$ id user
uid=501(user) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),98(_lpadmin),81(_appserveradm),79(_appserverusr),80(admin),101(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1)

2. Create mount point on the Mac

$ mkdir /Users/echua/pics

3. Mount NFS export

$ /sbin/mount <seerver>:/media/disk1/pictures /Users/echua/pics

4. Test it out by dragging and dropping files to the new file share and if all goes well you should be able to write and delete files from the share.

This NFS solution works out so much better than Samba, at least for my iPhoto picture archiving needs. Viewing iPhoto albums over NFS is much faster than over SMB.

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