RHCSA Series: Using ACLs (Access Control Lists) and Mounting Samba / NFS Shares – Part 7

Mounting NFS Network Shares

To show the list of NFS shares available in your server, you can use the showmount command with the -e option, followed by the machine name or its IP address. This tool is included in the nfs-utils package:

# yum update && yum install nfs-utils

Then do:

# showmount -e 192.168.0.10

and you will get a list of the available NFS shares on 192.168.0.10:

To mount NFS network shares on the local client using the command line on demand, use the following syntax:

# mount -t nfs -o [options] remote_host:/remote/directory /local/directory

which, in our case, translates to:

# mount -t nfs 192.168.0.10:/NFS-SHARE /mnt/nfs

If you get the following error message: “Job for rpc-statd.service failed. See “systemctl status rpc-statd.service” and “journalctl -xn” for details.”, make sure the rpcbind service is enabled and started in your system first:

# systemctl enable rpcbind.socket
# systemctl restart rpcbind.service

and then reboot. That should do the trick and you will be able to mount your NFS share as explained earlier. If you need to mount the NFS share automatically on system boot, add a valid entry to the /etc/fstab file:

remote_host:/remote/directory /local/directory nfs options 0 0

The variables remote_host, /remote/directory, /local/directory, and options (which is optional) are the same ones used when manually mounting an NFS share from the command line. As per our previous example:

192.168.0.10:/NFS-SHARE /mnt/nfs nfs defaults 0 0

Mounting CIFS (Samba) Network Shares

Samba represents the tool of choice to make a network share available in a network with *nix and Windows machines. To show the Samba shares that are available, use the smbclient command with the -L flag, followed by the machine name or its IP address. This tool is included in the samba-client package:

You will be prompted for root’s password in the remote host:

# smbclient -L 192.168.0.10

To mount Samba network shares on the local client you will need to install first the cifs-utils package:

# yum update && yum install cifs-utils

Then use the following syntax on the command line:

# mount -t cifs -o credentials=/path/to/credentials/file //remote_host/samba_share /local/directory

which, in our case, translates to:

# mount -t cifs -o credentials=~/.smbcredentials //192.168.0.10/gacanepa /mnt/samba

where smbcredentials:

username=gacanepa
password=XXXXXX

is a hidden file inside root’s home (/root/) with permissions set to 600, so that no one else but the owner of the file can read or write to it.

Please note that the samba_share is the name of the Samba share as returned by smbclient -L remote_host as shown above.

Now, if you need the Samba share to be available automatically on system boot, add a valid entry to the /etc/fstab file as follows:

//remote_host:/samba_share /local/directory cifs options 0 0

The variables remote_host, /samba_share, /local/directory, and options (which is optional) are the same ones used when manually mounting a Samba share from the command line. Following the definitions given in our previous example:

//192.168.0.10/gacanepa /mnt/samba	cifs credentials=/root/smbcredentials,defaults 0 0

Conclusion

In this article we have explained how to set up ACLs in Linux, and discussed how to mount CIFS and NFS network shares in a RHEL 7 client.

I recommend you to practice these concepts and even mix them (go ahead and try to set ACLs in mounted network shares) until you feel comfortable. If you have questions or comments feel free to use the form below to contact us anytime. Also, feel free to share this article through your social networks.