NFS Services Administrator's Guide (B.11.31.02) January 2008

Mounting and Unmounting Directories
NFS clients can mount any filesystem or a part of a filesystem that is shared by the NFS server.
Filesystems can be mounted automatically when the system boots, from the command line, or
through the automounter. The different ways to mount a filesystem are as follows:
• Mounting a filesystem at boot time and using the mount command
For information on how to mount a filesystem at boot time, see “Mounting a Remote Directory
on an NFS client” (page 40).
• Mounting a filesystem using an NFS URL
For information on how to mount an NFS filesystem using an NFS URL, see “Examples of
NFS Mounts ” (page 42).
• Mounting an NFS filesystem through a firewall
For information on how to mount an NFS filesystem through a firewall, see “Accessing
Shared NFS Directories across a Firewall” (page 33).
• Mounting a filesystem securely
For information on how to mount a filesystem in a secure manner, see “An Example for
Securely Mounting a directory” (page 43).
For information on how to disable mount access for a single client, see “Unmounting (Removing)
a Mounted Directory” (page 44).
Starting with HP-UX 11i v3, the mount command is enhanced to provide benefits such as
performance improvement of large sequential data transfers and local locking for faster access.
The umount command allows forcible unmounting of filesystems. These features can be accessed
using specific options of the mount command. For more information on these options, see
mount_nfs (1M), and umount(1M).
NFS clients can also unmount the directories using the umount command. For information on
unmounting a shared directory, see “Unsharing (Removing) a Shared Directory” (page 37).
Support for WebNFS
NFS is designed as a file access protocol for LANs. WebNFS is an extension of NFS. It enables
you to access files across the Internet easily. WebNFS is designed to handle unique problems
associated with accessing files across the Internet.
WebNFS enables filesystems at other locations on the Internet to appear to a user as a local
filesystem. WebNFS works through firewalls and implements features such as read-ahead and
write-behind, to improve throughput and performance over the Internet.
WebNFS is supported on NFS version 2 and 3 only.
For more information on WebNFS, see “Sharing directories across a firewall using the WebNFS
Feature” (page 35).
Secure Sharing of Directories
In earlier versions of HP-UX, NFS used the AUTH_SYS authentication, which uses UNIX style
authentication, (uid/gid), to allow access to the shared files. It is fairly simple to develop an
application or server that can masquerade as a user because the gid/uid ownership of a file can
be viewed.
The AUTH_DH authenticating method was introduced to address the vulnerabilities of the
AUTH_SYS authentication method. The AUTH_DH security model is stronger, because it
authenticates the user by using the user’s private key.
Kerberos is an authentication system that provides secure transactions over networks. It offers
strong user authentication, integrity and privacy. Kerberos support has been added to provide
New Features in NFS 19