Find NFS Clients Connected to NFS Server

Question: How to find Find NFS Clients Connected to NFS Server

Ans:

You can say it very simple by using

showmount -e <NFS Server Name>

# showmount -e umbox04
export list for umbox04:
/gpfs/edw/common umlpar1 umlpar2 umlpar3 umlpar4 umlpar5
/export/nim udaixserv1,udaixserv2,udaixserv3,udaixserv4,udaixserv5
/bigdata (everyone)

but there is a problem here, if the nfs mount is shared as everyone ( say /bigdata in the above example) you will not be able to tell ,to which clients are using it.

In-order to overcome above issues ,there are two ways to find the NFS clients connected to NFS server.

1. Using "netstat":

The idea with "netstat" is an indirect method . We use nfs port which is 2049 to get the clients information.

netstat -an | grep nfs.server.ip:port

If your nfs server IP address 10.6.55.21 and port is 2049, enter:

Sample outputs:

# netstat -an | grep 10.6.55.21:2049
tcp 0 0 10.6.55.21:2049 10.6.55.33:757 ESTABLISHED
tcp 0 0 10.6.55.21:2049 10.6.55.34:892 ESTABLISHED

Where,

10.6.55.21 - NFS serer IP address
2049 - NFS server port
10.6.55.33 and 10.6.55.34 - NFS clients IP address

2. Using showmount command

You can to use the showmount command to see mount information for an NFS server. The following command should not be used as it may produce unreliable result (you can type this command on any one of the nfs client):

showmount -a <NFS Server Name>

Sample outputs:

All mount points on mynfsserv01:

#showmount -a mynfsserv01
10.6.55.33:/umdata
10.6.55.34:/umdata
10.6.55.69:/umdata
10.6.55.3:/umdata
10.6.55.6:/umdata
10.6.55.16:/umdata

Where,

-a: List both the client hostname or IP address and mounted directory in host:dir format. This info should not be considered reliable.

As per the rpc.mountd(8) man page:

he rpc.mountd daemon registers every successful MNT request by adding an entry to the /var/lib/nfs/rmtab file. When receivng a UMNT request from an NFS client, rpc.mountd simply removes the matching entry from /var/lib/nfs/rmtab, as long as the access control list for that export allows that sender to access the export.

Clients can discover the list of file systems an NFS server is currently exporting, or the list of other clients that have mounted its exports, by using the showmount(8) command. showmount(8) uses other procedures in the NFS MOUNT protocol to report information about the server's exported file systems.

Note, however, that there is little to guarantee that the contents of /var/lib/nfs/rmtab are accurate. A client may continue accessing an export even after invoking UMNT. If the client reboots without sending a UMNT request, stale entries remain for that client in /var/lib/nfs/rmtab.