This lesson engages the student in some basic system adminstration.   The student is required to complete a realistic project.  This project requires each student to setup an NFS file share for a neighbor through a guest account.  This guest account will be a normal account possessing a normal home directory and will have read, write and execute priveleges in the NFS share filesystem.

Let me outline the major tasks in this project.

Host System Tasks

• Create a guest account using the GUI based utility.
• Verify that the guest account works with a successful login.
• Create the NFS file share directory using the 'mkdir' command or the Nautilus file manager.
• Setup the correct permissions and ownerships for the NFS file share directory
• New account should be the owner
• Group should be that of the new account
• Permissions shall be read, write and execute for the owner, read and execute for all others.
  
• Install the NFS server configuration tool from your CDROM.  This utility is entitled, 'redhat-config-nfs'.
• Once it is installed it can be activated using the path Main Menu --> System Settings --> Server Settings --> NFS Server.  Refer to your textbook pages 665 - 675 for additional details. This utility configures a file called /etc/exports file.
• Now that the NFS configuration file, '/etc/exports' has been edited, the NFS server (daemon) must be started or restarted.  Most of the service programs are located in a standard directory having a path of '/etc/rc.d/init.d'.  The NFS server is quite simple to remember, it's 'nfs'.  The NFS server is started by executing '/etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs start' from anywhere or ./nfs start in the /etc/rc.d/init.d directory.  To restart the NFS server, replace the word 'start' with 'restart' in either of the methods in the previous sentence.
• The NFS server can be started with a GUI too.  This is accomplished by following the path Main Menu --> System Settings --> Server Settings --> Services.  The service you'll need to select is 'nfs' in runlevel 3 and runlevel 5.  Make certain the 'nfs' server is started if not already running.
  

• Once you've identified some to use your NFS share, have them create an identical user account to your new account being used for the NFS share.
  
• Verify the NFS share is mountable by trying to mount it in the root account on the guest system.
• After successfully mounting the NFS share as root, the NFS mount must be added to the /etc/fstab file in order to enable normal users to mount the NFS share.  Refer to pages 676 - 679 or your instructor for details on the format to use when modifying this very important file.
• Set permissions and priveleges for the NFS share to permit users to mount by using the 'user' options.  Refer to the man pages for mount, 'man mount'.
• Mount the NFS share while in the new guest account from the desktop.  I'd suggest, right clicking on the Desktop --> Disks --> NFS share.

• useradd & userdel
• groupadd & groupdel
• passwd
• chmod & chown
• mkdir & rmdir
• mount & umount
• ls, ls -l, & ls -la
• whoami
• pwd