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exports(5) exports(5)
NAME
exports - NFS server export table
DESCRIPTION
The file /etc/exports contains a table of local physical file systems on an NFS server that are accessible to NFS
clients. The contents of the file are maintained by the server's system administrator.
Each file system in this table has a list of options and an access control list. The table is used by exportfs(8) to
give information to mountd(8).
The file format is similar to the SunOS exports file. Each line contains an export point and a whitespace-separated list
of clients allowed to mount the file system at that point. Each listed client may be immediately followed by a parenthe-
sized, comma-separated list of export options for that client. No whitespace is permitted between a client and its option
list.
Also, each line may have one or more specifications for default options after the path name, in the form of a dash ("-")
followed by an option list. The option list is used for all subsequent exports on that line only.
Blank lines are ignored. A pound sign ("#") introduces a comment to the end of the line. Entries may be continued across
newlines using a backslash. If an export name contains spaces it should be quoted using double quotes. You can also spec-
ify spaces or other unusual character in the export name using a backslash followed by the character code as three octal
digits.
To apply changes to this file, run exportfs-ra or restart the NFS server.
Machine Name Formats
NFS clients may be specified in a number of ways:
single host
This is the most common format. You may specify a host either by an abbreviated name recognized be the resolver,
the fully qualified domain name, or an IP address.
netgroups
NIS netgroups may be given as @group. Only the host part of each netgroup members is consider in checking for
membership. Empty host parts or those containing a single dash (-) are ignored.
wildcards
Machine names may contain the wildcard characters * and ?. This can be used to make the exports file more com-
pact; for instance, *.cs.foo.edu matches all hosts in the domain cs.foo.edu. As these characters also match the
dots in a domain name, the given pattern will also match all hosts within any subdomain of cs.foo.edu.
IP networks
You can also export directories to all hosts on an IP (sub-) network simultaneously. This is done by specifying an
IP address and netmask pair as address/netmask where the netmask can be specified in dotted-decimal format, or as
a contiguous mask length. For example, either `/255.255.252.0' or `/22' appended to the network base IPv4 address
results in identical subnetworks with 10 bits of host. Wildcard characters generally do not work on IP addresses,
though they may work by accident when reverse DNS lookups fail.
RPCSEC_GSS security
You may use the special strings "gss/krb5", "gss/krb5i", or "gss/krb5p" to restrict access to clients using rpcsec_gss
security. However, this syntax is deprecated; on linux kernels since 2.6.23, you should instead use the "sec=" export
option:
sec= The sec= option, followed by a colon-delimited list of security flavors, restricts the export to clients using
those flavors. Available security flavors include sys (the default--no cryptographic security), krb5 (authentica-
tion only), krb5i (integrity protection), and krb5p (privacy protection). For the purposes of security flavor
negotiation, order counts: preferred flavors should be listed first. The order of the sec= option with respect to
the other options does not matter, unless you want some options to be enforced differently depending on flavor.
In that case you may include multiple sec= options, and following options will be enforced only for access using
flavors listed in the immediately preceding sec= option. The only options that are permitted to vary in this way
are ro, rw, no_root_squash, root_squash, and all_squash.
General Options
exportfs understands the following export options:
secure This option requires that requests originate on an Internet port less than IPPORT_RESERVED (1024). This option is
on by default. To turn it off, specify insecure.
rw Allow both read and write requests on this NFS volume. The default is to disallow any request which changes the
filesystem. This can also be made explicit by using the ro option.
async This option allows the NFS server to violate the NFS protocol and reply to requests before any changes made by
that request have been committed to stable storage (e.g. disc drive).
Using this option usually improves performance, but at the cost that an unclean server restart (i.e. a crash) can
cause data to be lost or corrupted.
sync Reply to requests only after the changes have been committed to stable storage (see async above).
In releases of nfs-utils up to and including 1.0.0, the async option was the default. In all releases after
1.0.0, sync is the default, and async must be explicitly requested if needed. To help make system administrators
aware of this change, exportfs will issue a warning if neither sync nor async is specified.
no_wdelay
This option has no effect if async is also set. The NFS server will normally delay committing a write request to
disc slightly if it suspects that another related write request may be in progress or may arrive soon. This
allows multiple write requests to be committed to disc with the one operation which can improve performance. If
an NFS server received mainly small unrelated requests, this behaviour could actually reduce performance, so
no_wdelay is available to turn it off. The default can be explicitly requested with the wdelay option.
nohide This option is based on the option of the same name provided in IRIX NFS. Normally, if a server exports two
filesystems one of which is mounted on the other, then the client will have to mount both filesystems explicitly
to get access to them. If it just mounts the parent, it will see an empty directory at the place where the other
filesystem is mounted. That filesystem is "hidden".
Setting the nohide option on a filesystem causes it not to be hidden, and an appropriately authorised client will
be able to move from the parent to that filesystem without noticing the change.
However, some NFS clients do not cope well with this situation as, for instance, it is then possible for two files
in the one apparent filesystem to have the same inode number.
The nohide option is currently only effective on single host exports. It does not work reliably with netgroup,
subnet, or wildcard exports.
This option can be very useful in some situations, but it should be used with due care, and only after confirming
that the client system copes with the situation effectively.
The option can be explicitly disabled with hide.
crossmnt
This option is similar to nohide but it makes it possible for clients to move from the filesystem marked with
crossmnt to exported filesystems mounted on it. Thus when a child filesystem "B" is mounted on a parent "A", set-
ting crossmnt on "A" has the same effect as setting "nohide" on B.
no_subtree_check
This option disables subtree checking, which has mild security implications, but can improve reliability in some
circumstances.
If a subdirectory of a filesystem is exported, but the whole filesystem isn't then whenever a NFS request arrives,
the server must check not only that the accessed file is in the appropriate filesystem (which is easy) but also
that it is in the exported tree (which is harder). This check is called the subtree_check.
In order to perform this check, the server must include some information about the location of the file in the
"filehandle" that is given to the client. This can cause problems with accessing files that are renamed while a
client has them open (though in many simple cases it will still work).
subtree checking is also used to make sure that files inside directories to which only root has access can only be
accessed if the filesystem is exported with no_root_squash (see below), even if the file itself allows more gen-
eral access.
As a general guide, a home directory filesystem, which is normally exported at the root and may see lots of file
renames, should be exported with subtree checking disabled. A filesystem which is mostly readonly, and at least
doesn't see many file renames (e.g. /usr or /var) and for which subdirectories may be exported, should probably be
exported with subtree checks enabled.
The default of having subtree checks enabled, can be explicitly requested with subtree_check.
From release 1.1.0 of nfs-utils onwards, the default will be no_subtree_check as subtree_checking tends to cause
more problems than it is worth. If you genuinely require subtree checking, you should explicitly put that option
in the exports file. If you put neither option, exportfs will warn you that the change is pending.
insecure_locks
no_auth_nlm
This option (the two names are synonymous) tells the NFS server not to require authentication of locking requests
(i.e. requests which use the NLM protocol). Normally the NFS server will require a lock request to hold a creden-
tial for a user who has read access to the file. With this flag no access checks will be performed.
Early NFS client implementations did not send credentials with lock requests, and many current NFS clients still
exist which are based on the old implementations. Use this flag if you find that you can only lock files which
are world readable.
The default behaviour of requiring authentication for NLM requests can be explicitly requested with either of the
synonymous auth_nlm, or secure_locks.
no_acl On some specially patched kernels, and when exporting filesystems that support ACLs, this option tells nfsd not to
reveal ACLs to clients, so they will see only a subset of actual permissions on the given file system. This
option is safe for filesystems used by NFSv2 clients and old NFSv3 clients that perform access decisions locally.
Current NFSv3 clients use the ACCESS RPC to perform all access decisions on the server. Note that the no_acl
option only has effect on kernels specially patched to support it, and when exporting filesystems with ACL sup-
port. The default is to export with ACL support (i.e. by default, no_acl is off).
mountpoint=path
mp This option makes it possible to only export a directory if it has successfully been mounted. If no path is given
(e.g. mountpoint or mp) then the export point must also be a mount point. If it isn't then the export point is
not exported. This allows you to be sure that the directory underneath a mountpoint will never be exported by
accident if, for example, the filesystem failed to mount due to a disc error.
If a path is given (e.g. mountpoint=/path or mp=/path) then the nominated path must be a mountpoint for the
exportpoint to be exported.
fsid=num|root|uuid
NFS needs to be able to identify each filesystem that it exports. Normally it will use a UUID for the filesystem
(if the filesystem has such a thing) or the device number of the device holding the filesystem (if the filesystem
is stored on the device).
As not all filesystems are stored on devices, and not all filesystems have UUIDs, it is sometimes necessary to
explicitly tell NFS how to identify a filesystem. This is done with the fsid= option.
For NFSv4, there is a distinguished filesystem which is the root of all exported filesystem. This is specified
with fsid=root or fsid=0 both of which mean exactly the same thing.
Other filesystems can be identified with a small integer, or a UUID which should contain 32 hex digits and arbi-
trary punctuation.
Linux kernels version 2.6.20 and earlier do not understand the UUID setting so a small integer must be used if an
fsid option needs to be set for such kernels. Setting both a small number and a UUID is supported so the same
configuration can be made to work on old and new kernels alike.
refer=path@host[+host][:path@host[+host]]
A client referencing the export point will be directed to choose from the given list an alternative location for
the filesystem. (Note that the server must have a mountpoint here, though a different filesystem is not required;
so, for example, mount --bind /path /path is sufficient.)
replicas=path@host[+host][:path@host[+host]]
If the client asks for alternative locations for the export point, it will be given this list of alternatives.
(Note that actual replication of the filesystem must be handled elsewhere.)
User ID Mapping
nfsd bases its access control to files on the server machine on the uid and gid provided in each NFS RPC request. The
normal behavior a user would expect is that she can access her files on the server just as she would on a normal file
system. This requires that the same uids and gids are used on the client and the server machine. This is not always true,
nor is it always desirable.
Very often, it is not desirable that the root user on a client machine is also treated as root when accessing files on
the NFS server. To this end, uid 0 is normally mapped to a different id: the so-called anonymous or nobody uid. This mode
of operation (called `root squashing') is the default, and can be turned off with no_root_squash.
By default, exportfs chooses a uid and gid of 65534 for squashed access. These values can also be overridden by the
anonuid and anongid options. Finally, you can map all user requests to the anonymous uid by specifying the all_squash
option.
Here's the complete list of mapping options:
root_squash
Map requests from uid/gid 0 to the anonymous uid/gid. Note that this does not apply to any other uids or gids that
might be equally sensitive, such as user bin or group staff.
no_root_squash
Turn off root squashing. This option is mainly useful for diskless clients.
all_squash
Map all uids and gids to the anonymous user. Useful for NFS-exported public FTP directories, news spool directo-
ries, etc. The opposite option is no_all_squash, which is the default setting.
anonuid and anongid
These options explicitly set the uid and gid of the anonymous account. This option is primarily useful for PC/NFS
clients, where you might want all requests appear to be from one user. As an example, consider the export entry
for /home/joe in the example section below, which maps all requests to uid 150 (which is supposedly that of user
joe).
EXAMPLE
# sample /etc/exports file
/ master(rw) trusty(rw,no_root_squash)
/projects proj*.local.domain(rw)
/usr *.local.domain(ro) @trusted(rw)
/home/joe pc001(rw,all_squash,anonuid=150,anongid=100)
/pub *(ro,insecure,all_squash)
/srv/www -sync,rw server @trusted @external(ro)
The first line exports the entire filesystem to machines master and trusty. In addition to write access, all uid squash-
ing is turned off for host trusty. The second and third entry show examples for wildcard hostnames and netgroups (this is
the entry `@trusted'). The fourth line shows the entry for the PC/NFS client discussed above. Line 5 exports the public
FTP directory to every host in the world, executing all requests under the nobody account. The insecure option in this
entry also allows clients with NFS implementations that don't use a reserved port for NFS. The sixth line exports a
directory read-write to the machine 'server' as well as the `@trusted' netgroup, and read-only to netgroup `@external',
all three mounts with the `sync' option enabled.
FILES
/etc/exports
SEE ALSO
exportfs(8), netgroup(5), mountd(8), nfsd(8), showmount(8).
31 December 2009 exports(5)
