Server NFS (host A)

Dedicated drive for shared partition

This step can be skipped if you do not want to use an additional dedicated drive for shared files. In the example, the server will be Raspberry Pi 4 with a 4TB HDD connected via USB 3.

To mount an additional drive, we need to check its UUID using the command:

sudo blkid

We will use the UUID value read for our disk partition to create an entry in the /etc/fstab file:

UUID=<YOUR_PARTITION_UUID>   /mnt/RaPiHddStorage4TB   ext4   defaults,noatime,nofail,commit=120,x-systemd.device-timeout=30   0   2

Create the required directory, e.g.

sudo mkdir -r /mnt/RaPiHddStorage4TB

Restart the computer:

sudo reboot now

Run:

df -h

and we should have a mounted partition:

/dev/sda1       3.6T   20G  3.4T   1% /mnt/RaPiHddStorage4TB

NFS configuration on the server

Install:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nfs-kernel-server

Add line in /etc/exports (it's' safty only in private network):

/mnt/RaPiHddStorage4TB   192.168.1.0/24(rw,sync,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash)

Attention! It's' safty only in private network. Every computer in this network will have access to the files.

Refresh the list of exports:

sudo exportfs -ra

Check that the configured directory is exported:

sudo exportfs -v

Launching the server:

sudo systemctl start nfs-kernel-server
sudo systemctl enable nfs-kernel-server

Check status:

sudo systemctl status nfs-kernel-server

Client NFS (host B)

Install client:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nfs-common

Create mount point:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/RaPiHddStorage4TB

Change the owner if you are the only user:

sudo chown $USER:$USER -R /mnt/RaPiHddStorage4TB/

Install for testing:

sudo mount -t nfs 192.168.3.19:/mnt/RaPiHddStorage4TB /mnt/RaPiHddStorage4TB

Check whether you can see the shared resources (Replace the IP with the IP of the NFS server):

showmount -e 192.168.3.19

If everything works correctly, add the following line to the /etc/fstab file:

192.168.3.19:/mnt/RaPiHddStorage4TB   /mnt/RaPiHddStorage4TB   nfs4   _netdev,noauto,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.device-timeout=30,timeo=10,soft,retry=3  0  0

Now the NFS resource will be mounted during system startup.

There are many configurable parameters available. The ones presented here serve only as examples.