Overview

Network File Share (NFS) is a protocol for sharing storage. It is quite common in Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices and is a standard compared to Samba which is Microsoft specific but has been ported to Linux.

Install NFS Server

Install the relevant software:
sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap

Configure NFS Server

Configuring NFS server is relatively simply. Edit the file /etc/exports file and add all the directories available as a share. The format should be as follows

/media/cdrom 192.168.0.1/24(rw,async)

Using the above string this would share the CDROM to any computer with the IP range 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.254 that has read and write permissions and requests can be process asynchronously.

Specific IPs can be given to each share like this:

/media/cdrom 192.168.0.1(rw,async) 192.168.0.1(ro,async)

Computer 192.168.0.1 has the permissions described in the above example and the computer with 192.168.0.2 only has asynchronous requests and read only access to files for that share.

When specifying mount points note where the spaces are and are not because spaces are read by the system so

/media/cdrom 192.168.0.1 (rw,async)

is invalid because there is a space between the IP address and the parenthesis.

Once all the shares have been configured it is necessary to restart NFS to see the changes:
sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Mount NFS Share On Linux

Install the NFS client if the computer does not have a NFS server itself:
sudo apt-get install portmap nfs-common

To mount the share manually from the terminal type the following:
sudo mount 192.168.0.1:/media/cdrom /media/share
First is super user command sudo then mount command, IP address of NFS server followed by the path to share. The last parameter is the local mount point so in the above example it will mount the CDROM drive from the server onto /media/share directory of the client computer.

To make the mount more permanent edit the /etc/fstab file and the following line, one for each NFS share.

192.168.0.1:/media/cdrom /media/share nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr

The only part that needs to be changed is the IP address, NFS share point and the mount point. This is highlighted in bold in the example above. The rest should be fine left as is. This change should mount the share when the computer is started.

Mount NFS Share On Windows 7 Ultimate Edition

NFS support does not come as standard with Windows so it has to be installed. Also I only found the feature in Windows 7 Ultimate Edition and not the Professional. I believe there is a Business Edition in between but do not know if it has the support for NFS.

Go to the Control Panel and on the left hand side click on Turn Windows features on or off hyper link. It will load a list of software in a tree / node structure. Find Services for NFS and tick Client for NFS as a minimum.

On the start menu right click on Network and select Map network drive. If this option is not in the start menu go to Computer and right click on Network from the left hand panel. A wizard will start for mapping a network drive.

Select the drive letter to be assigned to the NFS share and for the Folder enter the address [server]:[path] for example 192.168.0.1:/media/cdrom
Tick Reconnect at logon if you want it to connect on start up and click Finish to end the wizard.

The only problem with mounting the NFS on Windows is every time Computer it takes a longer to scan and load the drives because it scans the NFS to get the size and amount used on the NFS.

Summary

NFS between Linux machines is perfect and a good way to share files. Mounting a NFS makes the local share look as if it was it was local drive.

For Windows I’d stick to using Samba because it doesn’t take a while to scan the shared drive every time the drive is highlighted to get the drive information such as amount of space available. It’s not a nice to administer two services doing the same thing but it works.

NFS Server and Client Configuration in Ubuntu

It is possible to spoof the MAC address in Windows without going into the registry.

The network will go down during this process so it’s best to stop or wait till all downloads or any other network related activity has stopped.

Right click on Computer and select Manage.

Go to Device Manager on the left hand side list to display all the hardware usually categorised by type. Drill down into Network adapters and select the Network Interface to be changed.

Right click on the Network card and select Properties.

Go to the Advanced tab and look for Network Address in the Property: list. In some cases if this property is not listed it can be added in from the same window. Selecting the Network Address will change the right hand side to what can be changed. By default this is set to Not Present. To enter a custom MAC address select the Value radio button and enter in the MAC address with no spaces or colons in the textbox provided. OK all the windows to accept the changes. To undo this change simply change the selection of the radio buttons from Value to Not Present.

The optional steps below allows a reserved IP address to be re-assigned to the new MAC address.
Either restart of go to Start Menu > Run…. type in cmd and press enter. A DOS window should appear. type in ipconfig /release to disconnect all network adapters and ipconfig /renew to get a new IP.

How to Change or Spoof MAC Address in Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003/2008, Mac OS X, Unix and Linux

There is a report generator in Microsoft Windows 7 which can help you track down what is being used in terms of power. The report tells you what is stopping the computer going into sleep mode (if sleep mode is turned on) as well as devices that do not “suspend”.

Go to the command line as an administrator. This can be achived by going to Start Menu and typing cmd in the search bar. Search for cmd.exe under Programs, hold Shift key and right click on cmd.exe. At this point you can let go of the shift key and select Run as administrator.

A dialogue box may warn you when starting the the program but OK it to start the program. Type:
powercfg -energy
and press enter to start it. The program will monitor your computer for 1 minute. In this time do what you wish.

Once it has finished it will print out the location of the report which is in a HTML (web page) format. You may need to copy to a suitable folder for your browser to open it.

Tekzilla Daily Tip #511

Windows 7 has a built in monitor calibration tool which isn’t too bad. Sadly it only calibrates one monitor in a dual monitor set up.

To start the utility go to Start Menu and type dccw and walk through the wizard.

Valve has done a great work integration Steam with Windows 7. The icon in the taskbar shows the download status of all the currently downloading items. This was demos in my case. I have the Steam icon in my start menu list and it has an extended menu allowing you to change status on Steam Friends.

This is a fine example of good OS integration from a third part software vendor.