Installing and configuring NFS server on Debian 8 Jessie

NFS is a file system that can be shared by several hosts.

In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to install and configure an NFS server on Debian 8 Jessie.

Installing and configuring an NFS server

First, we use the command below to install the NFS server:

apt-get install nfs-kernel-server

Our folder to be shared will be in “/var/lib/vz/nfs”:

mkdir -p /var/lib/vz/nfs

The “/etc/exports” file is where the NFS mount point settings are made:

vim /etc/exports

Each line in the file corresponds to a client that can access your NFS server:

# /etc/exports: the access control list for filesystems which may be exported
#               to NFS clients.  See exports(5).
#
# Example for NFSv2 and NFSv3:
# /srv/homes       hostname1(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) hostname2(ro,sync,no_subtree_check)
#
# Example for NFSv4:
# /srv/nfs4        gss/krb5i(rw,sync,fsid=0,crossmnt,no_subtree_check)
# /srv/nfs4/homes  gss/krb5i(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
#

/var/lib/vz/nfs    192.168.0.10(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
/var/lib/vz/nfs    192.168.0.11(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)

With the above settings made, simply save the file and then restart the NFS service:

systemctl restart nfs-kernel-server.service