On 24/07/2010, at 12:51 PM, Simon Coulter wrote:
Using NFS between OS/400, Mac, and OS/2 is on my list of things to try
but it's been that way for years. I've got stuff on OS/400 and OS/2
that I'd like to access from my Mac but I just resort to FTP. I'll try
to take a look at it over the next few days and report what I learn.
I succeeded in getting NFS to work between Mac and OS/2, Mac and OS/
400, and between OS/400 and OS/2. I didn't try to mount a Mac file
system on OS/400. The OS/2 part was really easy. OS/400 somewhat less
so.
OS/2 (192.168.9.254)
====================
I used tcpcfg2 and added NFS entries for two paths, then linked client
systems with those paths. The
<boot>:/mptn/etc/exports
file contained:
e:\simon -alias \shc -rw 192.168.9.12 # Home dir for SHC
e:\common -alias \common 192.168.9.12 192.168.9.1 # Common stuff
This should allow my Mac (192.168.9.12) to mount both \shc and \common
and should allow an OS/400 system (192.168.9.1) to mount \common.
OS/400 (192.168.9.1)
====================
I used Navigator to locate File Systems/Integrated File System/Root/
home/shc and then right-clicked and selected NFS Export->Properties
from the context menu. In the General tab I accepted the default
anonymous user and I checked the "Add to list of permanently defined
exports". On the Access tab I set Public to None then clicked Add Host/
Netgroup. My Mac wasn't in the list of known servers so I entered it
by IP address and clicked Add-> then clicked OK. Then I selected the
new host and clicked Customize. Here I set access rights to Read/Write
and took the defaults for everything else. I clicked OK and then
clicked Export.
Navigator added the following to /etc/exports
/home/shc RO RW=192.168.9.12:, ACCESS=192.168.9.12:, ROOT=
Then I started the NFS server accepting all defaults.
This should allow my Mac (192.168.9.12) to mount /home/shc
MacOS X [10.5.7] (192.168.9.12)
===============================
I used Finder->Go->Connect to Server. In the Server Address field I
typed nfs://192.168.9.254/shc (for OS/2) and clicked Connect. Whir ...
whir ... and then a Finder window opened with that directory mounted
and displayed. I could navigate and view files.
I used Finder->Go->Connect to Server again. This time I typed nfs://
192.168.9.1/home/shc (for OS/400) and clicked Connect. Whir ...
whir ... and then a Finder window opened with that directory mounted
but not available. Error message "The folder 'shc' could not be opened
because you do not have sufficient access privileges" was displayed.
I think the cause of this is:
a) the UID of my MacOS profile does not match the UID of any OS/400
profile so the default anonymous user is used.
b) The default anonymous user QNFSANON has no authority to /home/shc
One solution is to grant QNFSANON *RX rights to /home/shc. A better
solution is to specify the desired ANON user for this connexion as my
own profile. The ideal solution is to ensure that UID and GID values
match across all systems in an NFS network.
I granted QNFSANON *RX rights to /home/shc, ran CHGNFSEXP '-A', and
connected successfully. I unmounted the connexion and removed QNFSANON
authority. Then I edited /etc/exports and added ANON=111 (the UID of
my own profile), saved, exited, and ran CHGNFSEXP '-A'. Again I could
connect successfully.
I think that if I could change the UID of my profile to match that of
my ID on MacOS X then a successful connexion could be made without
relying on the ANON attribute. I could not test this because running
CHGUSRPRF UID(501) resulted in CPF22DC - Not allowed to change UID of
the user profile. The UID of a user profile may not be changed when
the profile is the owner of an object in a directory.
OS/400 as NFS Client
====================
Finally I wanted to test OS/400 as an NFS client so I created a mount
point:
MKDIR '/common' DTAAUT(*RX)
then I mounted the OS/2 directory
MOUNT TYPE(*NFS) MFS('192.168.9.254:/common') MNTOVRDIR('/common')
CCSID(*ASCII)
then WRKLNK '/common/*' showed me the files and I could view the
contents.
UNMOUNT TYPE(*NFS) MNTOVRDIR('/common')
removed access to the OS/2 directory.
Although I used Navigator to set the values in /etc/exports this file
can be directly edited. I used Navigator because I suspected that it
would add attributes not documented in the file comment block. Also
the only documentation I could find for NFS is a PDF of:
OS/400 Network File System Support (SC41-5714)
which is not up to the standard of other OS/400 documentation. You can
glean the necessary information from it but it's harder than it should
be. Looks like a poor rewrite of a Unix manual.
The Information Centre was next to useless although it did give me the
link to the PDF mentioned above. Here's an example of how useless it
was. A search in the Information Centre for nfs gives a 100% hit on:
:quote.
How to use SAMBA and NFS to access files in the Integrated File System
Users and/or applications of a Linux partition can use a variety of
tools to access files stored in the integrated file system. Two of
these tools are Network File System (NFS) and SAMBA.
For more information on i5/OS® NetServer support for Samba, refer to
Linux on the System i Platform.
:equote.
That doesn't answer HOW at all. In fact, it's just blurb and is no
practical use. Following the link (Linux on the System i Platform)
just takes you to marketing fluff where a number of the links are
broken. Complete waste of time. Most of the other search results
simply explained WHAT you could do with NFS and again did not address
HOW. The search results for various NFS commands were only useful
after I'd already set up the /etc/exports file and then the command
help text was more useful.
Anyway, NFS works for me so hopefully you'll get some benefit from the
information.
Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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