How to Set Up NFS Server on Ubuntu

Install NFS Server

First, install the NFS kernel server:

sudo apt install nfs-kernel-server

Start the NFS service:

sudo systemctl start nfs-kernel-server.service

Configure Access Policy

Edit the /etc/exports file to define shared directories:

sudo nano /etc/exports

Example

# Publicly accessible directory
/srv/nfs/public *(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)

# Directory accessible only to internal IP addresses (example: 192.168.1.0/24 subnet)
# Replace with your actual internal IP range
/srv/nfs/private 192.168.1.0/24(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)

#or set of IPs
# Allow access to two specific IPs for the /srv/nfs/private folder
/srv/nfs/private 192.168.1.10(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) 192.168.1.20(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)

Example flags

/srv/nfs/public is the directory being shared, 192.168.1.0/24 is the subnet of IP addresses allowed to access, rw is Read and write access, sync is data is written to disk before responding & no_subtree_check Improves performance by not checking if the file being accessed is within a subdirectory of the exported directory.

Apply Configuration

sudo exportfs -a

Allow Port for Firewall (Optional)

Make sure to allow port 2049, which is the main port used by NFS for file sharing.

sudo ufw allow 2049/tcp comment "NFS Server"

Install NFS Common on Client Machines

On other Ubuntu machines (worker nodes) that need to mount the NFS shares, install the NFS common package:

sudo apt install nfs-common

Now your worker nodes can mount the NFS shares!

swagfin/how-to-setup-nfs-server-on-ubuntu.md