In a heterogeneous OS environment, the network file system of choice is clearly SMB/CIFS, mostly since heterogeneous implies the existence of windows machines. Lately though, I’ve been getting a little annoyed with some of the quirks of a file-system from the single user Windows world. I also don’t have any Windows machines left. Therefore, when it came time to share one resource to multiple machines, I decided to give NFS a try.

The first step on openSUSE is to open up Yast2 and enter the software management section. Filter on packages with a name containing ‘nfs.’

Since this is a server box, I only have the console version of Yast installed. The X version will look similar. Note that the nfs-server package is not installed. This is recommended, since the kernel support for NFS is superior to the userland version. Packages you should have installed are portmap, and yast2-nfs-server. Having NTP installed running is also a good idea, otherwise you might encounter errors about files that only exist in the future.

Once you’ve installed the required packages, it’s time to open the NFS configuration wizard.

Full Story.