Enabling NFS on debian server

I currently have a home server running Debian Etch. It has been running just fine for almost a year now, but the only issue that I have is that in order to have my linux based laptops and desktops connect to the server to share files, I am using Samba and PAM authentication.

This is working just fine and I used it mostly because I do still have a single Windows machine, but now that I am going to be moving that machine to linux also, I would like to eliminate Samba and just do file and printer sharing natively in linux.

The server currently is setup using the ext3 file system and I have read that I think I need to either enable or use NFS on the server. Is there any easy way to do this now that everything is already setup or do I need to basically reinstall the entire server machine?

If I have to re-setup the server then this would be as good a time as any to do some of the other things that I want down there, but I would prefer to not do them at the present time. I will be adding a new server box here shortly and I was going to use the new box as the primary server and the current one as a secondary web and email server.

So is it possible to just enable or move from ext3 to NFS without losing all my data?

Thanks,
-Eric

Hi Eric,

You only need to install the nfs-kernel-server package, configure the /etc/exports file to indicate the server's locations that you want to share, e.g.

/mnv/videos/movies/ 192.168.10.1/24(ro,async,no_subtree_check)

I'm sharing the /mnv/videos/movies path (which is an ext3 filesystem) with all machines on my local network, read only mode... and that's all ... clients can configure on fstab the auto mount of that sharing resources...

I'm using the hard disk of my server to store ISO images of my DVD collection, sharing on the local network, and clients can mount the image locally and watch the movie over the network, full DVD quality. Everything over NFS.

Just in case: NFS is not a filesystem, but a protocol for sharing any filesystem.

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/NFS-HOWTO.html