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Currently I'm trying to setup a PXE server to boot Ubuntu 10.04 on clients.

(See Issues with PXE setup on Ubuntu 10.04 DHCP/NFS Server for more details)

I'm trying to mount basically the entire client's (the machine I'm on right now) filesystem (everything in /) to the server, however I'm getting an error that the server isn't responding. Since I get internet through the server, I'm not sure why the server isn't responding, unless there is an issue with the iptables blocking access to mount.

What do you guys think? If you want to see any config info or anything, just let me know.

Thank you

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Sep 5 '11 at 15:37

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1 Answer

NFS is a little difficult to allow via iptables because it can use dynamic ports (via the portmap daemon which allows NFS to ask what ports are being used). I would agree that iptables is a likely culprit. One thing you could try doing is a blanket allow from the client's IP, and see if that resolves the problem (your problem may lie elsewhere as well). For example:

iptables -I INPUT -s $CLIENT_IP -j ACCEPT

If that resolves it, you probably want to follow this recipe to set up an iptables allow: iptables NFS allow rules

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I will check that out for sure. It makes sense. My server just started acting up, and since there isn't much to it at this point I'm going to start from scratch again. I'll be sure to see if that fixes my issues. –  Alex Brooks Sep 5 '11 at 20:00
Okay I got the mount to pass through. Turned out I didn't allow FTP through (which makes sense why it wouldn't work...). Now I'm just having issues copying part of the OS files to the mount point. It's giving me issues with permissions, even though I'm sudoing. Once I get back to the computer I will paste them. –  Alex Brooks Sep 7 '11 at 20:44
By default NFS enables "root_squash" which causes root access to be treated as a non-privileged user called "nfsnobody". You need to use "no_root_squash" in /etc/exports on the server and then "exportfs -r". See "man 5 exports" for more information on root_squash. –  Sean Reifschneider Sep 7 '11 at 23:15
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