NFS through a firewall

[Ramesh.K.R.]

Hi,

Can we use NFS through a firewall ?? If so, ho ?? Is it effective enough ??
Another basic quistion: Is it advisable to use NFS across remote locations ??

Thanks & Regards,
Ramesh.K.R.

[Patrick Wallek]

What kind of WAN connection do you have? I would not really want to try using NFS across a WAN.

[Alexander Chuzhoy]

First of all -you're in the wrong forum.
1. You can use nfs through a firewall although it's not that simple

Use rpcinfo -p on your unix system to obtain registered port number, protocol and version information on NFS server for all services below:
Portmapper
NFS Daemon
Mount Daemon
Locking Manager
PCNFS Daemon (If pcnfs authentication is required)
there are people who explicitly specify portnumbers to be used by RPC services and prefer them to use privileged port numbers so they entries to /etc/services.
Like:


usr/sbin/rpc.mountd --port 635
Otherwise you have to open an unacceptable range of ports.


2.It's advised (I think in every book)under any circumstances not to use NFS across remote locations since it can be compromised (it's RPC afterall)....

[Steven E. Protter]

You can do it. Its just a port after all. What response time is going to be is going to depend on the firewall and bandwidth.

NFS does not encrypt the data, so the data is going to go back and forth on the public Internet raw, easily sniffed.

If its proprietary, I'd recommend another methodology.

NFS just uses a port, just like a httpd server.

SEP