[CentOS] Netinstall & NFS using local server.

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 2:43 PM, Lisandro Grullon
<lgrullon at citytech.cuny.edu> wrote:
> Dear CentOS community,
> I have install centos via CD, DVD and Directly off the net via http and FTP.
> Now I want to do a NFS install from a local server and a client. Both,
> client and server are in the same vlan 10.14.10.0/255.255.255.0.

*Don't*. From painful experience, the NFS is very fragile to local
network interruptions and tends to leave unreleased mountpoints
reported on the NFS server, which makes getting meaningful monitoring
of the server quite awkward.

> The server has a static 10.14.10.15 address and the client gets its own
> address via DHCP. I download the DVD image from one of the mirrors and
> placed it under /centos-media/centosdvd32/DVD/CentOS-5.5-i386-bin-DVD.iso
> which is a dedicated partition on the server to hold all images. After that
> I exported the usual entries under /etc/exports and reloaded NFS using
> /sbin/service nfs reload. This is what my exports file looks like:
>
> [root at zeus DVD]# cat /etc/exports
> /centos-media/centosdvd64 10.14.10.0/255.255.255.0(ro,sync,all_squash)
> /centos-media/centosdvd32/DVD 10.14.10.0/255.255.255.0(ro,sync,all_squash)
>
> After doing so, I also modified the entries under IPtables to allow traffic
> in 111 and 2049 at the UDP/TCP level and restarted the service as shown
> bellow.

Oh, dear. This sort of thing is requirement is why you simply run a
light FTP or HTTP server and make it accessible that way. It's
nominally slower, but the difference is hardly noticeable.

> [root at zeus DVD]# cat /etc/sysconfig/iptables
> # Firewall configuration written by system-config-securitylevel
> # Manual customization of this file is not recommended.
> *filter
> :INPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
> :FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0]
> :OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
> :RH-Firewall-1-INPUT - [0:0]
> -A INPUT -j RH-Firewall-1-INPUT
> -A FORWARD -j RH-Firewall-1-INPUT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type any -j ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 50 -j ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 51 -j ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp --dport 5353 -d 224.0.0.251 -j ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 631 -j ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 631 -j ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 -j
> ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 10.14.10.0/24 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport
> 2049 -j ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 10.14.10.0/24 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport
> 111 -j ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 10.14.10.0/24 -m state --state NEW -p udp --dport
> 2049 -j ACCEPT
> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 10.14.10.0/24 -m state --state NEW -p udp --dport
> 111 -j ACCEPT
> COMMIT
>
> [root at zeus DVD]# /sbin/service iptables restart
>
> When I try loading the net-install disc from the client i get to the area
> where I specify the Ip of the server and the NFS path in the server, hitting
> enter returns "That directory does not seem to contain CentOS installation
> tree", I triple check the ISO and I know its there with all appropriate
> permissions. Can someone tell me what am I missing? I have spend all day
> trying to get NFS working in the local vlan, i know that all ports are open
> within the vlan at the routers level. Any clues?

What is the actual path you are giving it? Are you looking at the top
of the relevant NFS exported directory? And did you pout all the
contents of the ISO image there, are are you doing somehing stranger?