definitions

NFS is one of the network filesystems available on Linux. An NFS server has the NFS service installed and enabled. It hosts the mounted filesystem that shall be made available to remote systems. This action is called export and involves these files:

• /etc/exports: where I configure the mounted filesystems that need to be remotely available to the defined machines,
• /var/lib/nfs/etab: is called the master export table. It is populated as soon as an entry, in a correct format, is recorded in the /etc/exports file and exportnfs -a is run. The exportnfs -a command reads the entries of /etc/exports to do its job. I am simplifying these steps with the expression create an NFS share.

establish a NFS export

Here is my lab topology: rhel10-vm1 (192.168.122.216): NFS server <—> rhel10-vm2 (192.168.122.6): NFS client.

filesystem concepts

A filesystem (aka filesystem) is the software structure (the formatting) that is located on a storage device or in memory, and dictates how data is organized there.

When a filesystem is located on a storage device, like a disk or DVDROM, then it is called a physical filesystem. When it is located in memory, like for example when the Linux kernel loads the proc filesystem in RAM, then it is called a virtual filesystem.