[ale] NFS as a hair-loss enhancer

[Omar Loggiodice]

Hi Joe,

   One important part of NFS is how user and group ids are
mapped. By default (i.e. with the exports file you showed) 
NFS operates doing root squashing, which means that a client
accessing the server as root will be mapped to an anonymous
user. This could happen from an installation floppy, since
they use the root account for everything (uid 0).

If the anonymous user does not have access to the exported
directory/files in your server, neither will the
installation machine running as root from an installation
floppy.

This also might shed some light about the "mysterious"
way in which everything started to work. Simply doing 
a chmod -R a+r on the exported filesystem will give access
to the installation machine via NFS even if root squashing
is enabled.

For more information on other uid/gid mapping options for
NFS take a look at man 5 exports.


Omar



On Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Joe Knapka wrote:

>I was wrong, the extra space in /etc/exports had nothing to do with the
>problem. So now I am just blindly mystified. I've perused a few NFS
>FAQ sites here and there, but none has addressed my particular issue.
>
>But it does work now.
>
>I'd like to look at the NFS source, but so far I haven't been able to
>find it; anyone know where it lives? (Universal NFS Server v2.2beta47)
>
>-- Joe
>

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