Hi everyone,

I have two computers running Mandriva 2008.0, both of them are connected to the same Linksys router via (wired) LAN. I want to be able to share a folder, i.e. to define one of the folders in PC1 to be also accessible from PC2.

In PC1 I used MCC -> Network sharing -> share your data through NFS, and there I picked the desired folder. Then I went to PC2, but under Places -> Network I don't see anything besides Windows Network (which is naturally empty). In PC1 I tried to play with Host Access (changed from * to 192.168.1.0/8 and other options), and also with User Id Mapping (changed from "No user UID mapping" to the other options), but nothing helped.

As always, I will appreciate your advice. Thanks!

It's not clear to me what you are referring to here. On PC2 try going to MCC>Network Sharing>Use NFS Shares and try configuring through there. I can't remember if the necessary NFS packages are installed by default in mdv2008, but if they are not installed on PC2 you won't ever see the NFS shares in any configuration tool.

I do use NFS on my two mandriva boxes.

I set up sharing on pc1 for music and videos

on pc2 indeed go to mcc>network sharing>use NFS shares If it is not intalled it will ask you if you want to install it. There you can search for the nfs server (pc1) and it will show you the shares available, from there, you need to select mount points on pc2 and set any options you may want. Then through Konqueror go to storage media and should see the shares as unmounted nfs shares. Right click on them and can mount them. That's how I do it. Brain is kinda fried so it's not real detailed...like at all...

Thanks, but in MCC, the "Use NFS shares" shows nothing (after the package was installed in the first usage). I mean the list is blank. Even after I click "Search new servers", so I don't know what I should configure and how to do it.

On my box, PC1 is set as 192.168.1.110 On PC2 the IP is 192.168.1.105

So on PC1 which is the NFS server, I have the Host Access set as 192.168.1.105 That ensures only my laptop may connect to it. Though if trust everyone on the network can be left as *

You may need to restart the nfs server, which is in the menu, I think Under options or Server.

On my network both computers have the same IP (I checked it with ifconfig), so I left it with * (I don't care to open this folder to the whole network).

Reboot the "server" didn't help.

Just out of interest, how do you organise the file permissions? Is it ext2/ext3 formatted, in which case do you have to do anything special with the read/write permissions so that different users can access the same files? Seems like a dumb question but I thought by default files and directories which you create aren't world-read/writeable?

Woah, that doesn't sound very right! Can both machines access the internet?

Wait, my bad. PC1 is 192.168.1.101, PC2 is 192.168.1.102. Still the problem remains.

Well, both systems are maintained by me, I use my laptop, my fiance has her Desktop, I map the users to anon and anon is mapped to the home account so both systems can access eachothers drives as if they owned them. Both /home is in ext3 We are the only ones that are allowed in a house of five since the other three think windows is the shit.

The next step in troubleshooting would be to see if you can ping one pc from the other. That would tell you if they can see each other on the network. From PC1, run:

$ ping -c3 192.168.1.102

and from PC2:

$ ping -c3 192.168.1.101

However, before doing that, on each PC go into MCC>Security>Set up your personal firewall and make sure the "Echo request" box is ticked otherwise the firewall will block ping. You could also try ticking the "Everything(no firewall)" box and see if that effects your ability to see NFS shares. That will eliminate your mandriva firewall as a potential source of the problem.

OK, after I chose the "No Firewall" option I could ping, but ticking the "Echo request" alone was not enough. Anyway, even after the ping is enabled, I still don't see PC1 from PC2. Either I'm doing something fundamental wrongly, or something is mis-congfigured in (at least) one of my systems.

Portmapper and NFS are difficult to secure using any kind of port-based rules because Portmapper will dynamically assign ports for use. The NFS server configuration file /etc/sysconfig/nfs-server provides some guidance on the issue but I know that there used to be a more definitive document somewhere within the file system (e.g., /usr/share/doc) but I can't find it right now. Maybe I'm thinking of Mandriva 2007...

[When the Gentoo Wiki is restored] Take a look at the Gentoo NFS HOWTO for a better idea of how to define the ports that Portmapper assigns to NFS. I believe that these variables are fairly universal. [In the mean time, Google has the HOWTO cached.]

From PC1 execute the following command as root...


This command should return a list of ports used by NFS. If it does not, NFS is not running. You'll need to dig around to find out why. If NFS is running, execute the following command from PC1 as root...


This command should return a list of NFS exports. If it does not, the problem resides with the NFS configuration on PC1. Please post the contents of your /etc/exports file. If NFS is running and correctly exporting directories, execute the following command from PC2 as root...


This command should return a list of NFS exports. If it does not, the problem resides with the firewall configuration on PC1.