OpenBSD NFS client/server

[jakeswen]

"My NFS mounts are over a private vlan(4) which requires wired Ethernet. When I unplug and switch to WiFi, that vlan is no longer active."

I read this in a previous post about NFS and it's exactly what I hope to do, with my laptop as an OpenBSD NFS client. I'm in the process of upgrading my home network so can jggimi or anyone else provide more information about how this can be done?

Should I use FreeBSD as the NFS server OS? I would also use it for data backups, with as little effort as possible -- scripts that will run rsync or a similar utility on a daily/weekly basis. I'm not sure that I want to take on FreeNAS and ZFS yet.

Right now my backups are on various USB flash drives. Very Windows-user-like I know.

[jggimi]

It might help to put this in context: http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=9807

I only use NFS when on wired Ethernet. Is that, also, what you wish to do? If so, there's nothing special about either the client or server configuration. No 'knobs' twisted.

I happen to use a separate VLAN for NFS traffic, as this makes the traffic easy to secure. If secure data transfer is needed, either IPSec or an isolated LAN/VLAN are the usual choices.

All Unix-like and many other OSes can be NFS file servers, even Windows. One chooses the file server OS based on many factors. You asked about FreeBSD and FreeNAS, which is FreeBSD-based, and some may choose FreeBSD/FreeNAS because of ZFS, which you state you are not currently interested in deploying.

I happen to use OpenBSD for my NFS servers, because those servers provide additional services and OpenBSD is what they run.

If you do elect to serve NFS to OpenBSD clients from non-OpenBSD servers, take note that OpenBSD's kernel client does not support NFSv4.

[jakeswen]

Yes, that's what I hope to do, implement a few keep it simple solutions to secure my home network, though there's no top secret data being protected.

Overall I want to keep my traffic from general web surfing, Playstation, MythTV etc on a separate VLAN from my shared files. I'll install a basic setup of pfSense too, on an old dedicated box, because to me it make sense to maintain that long term compared to learning about and implementing new mediocre firewalls that come with ISP provided all in one devices every couple of years. Plus, plugins for Snort etc are nice add-ons.

On the laptop I could use a wireless network connection for web surfing (more vulnerable) and simply switch to the wired network to access shared files. Thanks for the heads-up about NFS v4. As far as I know NFS v3 will be more than enough for me, because I won't be using advanced features such as parallel access and domains. So maybe I'll set that up with OpenBSD -- not sure yet. What annoys me is that an NFS client was added in Windows 7 and then removed in Windows 8 or 10. I'd rather not mess with Samba because that would add the overhead of maintaining another part of the eco-system.

[jggimi]

NFS client connectivity is a kernel service, managed dynamically via mount(8), umount(8), and mount_nfs(8). For my purposes, everything is provisioned via fstab(5). NFS server provisioning requires userland daemons. Both server and client provisioning are described in the FAQ.

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The routers/firewalls that I manage are all OpenBSD. PF is also my preferred network policy toolkit.