Setup NFS for RHEL Virtual Machine on a OSX Host

gistfile1.md

Setup NFS for RHEL Virtual Machine on a OSX Host

In my case to use my RHEL virtual machine as development webserver, but be able to edit all files locally. I know there are other options, i.e. via sshfs and osxfuse, but NFS does support symlinks...

Configure Virtual Box networking

In your Virtual Box (application, not VM) configuration create a new Host-only network

IP4 Address: 192.168.56.1
IP4 Network Mask: 255.255.255.0
Enabled DHCP Server
Server Address: 192.168.56.100
Server Mask: 255.255.255.0
Lower Address Bound: 192.168.56.101
Upper Address Bound: 192.168.56.254

Stop VM and in its settings add a second interface (the first one should be NAT) with "Host-only adaptater" and "vboxnet0" (the one you just above)

Then you should have a new interface on your host:

ifconfig -a
vboxnet0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
	ether 0a:00:27:00:00:00
	inet 192.168.56.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.56.255

In your VM, create a config for the new interface by copying eth0

cp /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1
vim /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

Simply change the device name, it should look like this

DEVICE="eth1"
BOOTPROTO="dhcp"
NM_CONTROLLED="yes"
ONBOOT="yes"

Reboot the VM, the guest now have a new interface as well:

ifconfig -a
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:27:E8:41:72
          inet addr:192.168.56.101  Bcast:192.168.56.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::a00:27ff:fee8:4172/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:367 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:273 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:36792 (35.9 KiB)  TX bytes:25230 (24.6 KiB)

SELinux users

For HTTPD to work with an NFS-mounted document root, you will probably need to disable SELinux on the guest:

vim /etc/selinux/config 

insert or update:

SELINUX=disabled

Reboot the VM or call that one

setenforce 0

Install NFS client in MV

Now you probably need to install NFS in your VM

yum install nfs*

Start NFS service and add to autostart

service rpcbind start
service nfs start
/sbin/chkconfig --add rpcbind
/sbin/chkconfig --add nfs

Adapt VM firewall

Update VM firewall to allow all traffic to Host-only adapter

vim /etc/sysconfig/iptables 

Insert the following rule after any eth0 rules or right before that rule: "-A INPUT -j DROP":

-A INPUT -i eth1 -j ACCEPT

Restart the firewall

service iptables restart

You should be able to ping the host from vm and verce visa

ping 192.168.56.101 // from host to vm
ping 192.168.56.1 // from vm to host

Config host shares

Make the host's (OSX) directory/files accessable by setting up the NFS share Edit (and create) /etc/exports file

sudo vim /etc/exports

Add your folder to share, add as many as you like the ip at the end means that access is allowed from the vm only

/Users/<username>/Sites -alldirs -mapall=<username> 192.168.56.101

Restart NFS Server on host

sudo nfsd restart

Mount shares in VM

Test it in your VM, if it works unmount it

mount -v 192.168.56.1:/Users/<username>/Sites /mnt
ls -lisa /mnt
umount /mnt

Add your mount config to /etc/fstab to have it as a reboot-save shortcut (I've added some performance optimizations for mount options)

192.168.56.1:/Users/<username>/Sites	/var/www/vhosts    nfs    rsize=32768,wsize=32768,intr,noatime,rw,auto,rw 0 0

Then mount it, it will auto-mount on reboot

mount /var/www/vhosts

Thanks

Lots of this what taken from https://tuleap.net/wiki/?group_id=101&pagename=Development+environment%2FVirtualBox