NFS Server

To share a directory on your computer and make it available to other computers on your network.
first make sure that nfs is installed and running as a service
/etc/init.d/ nfs status

if it is not running type /etc/init.d/ nfs start

and to make it start automatically at boot time type
chkconfig nfs on
(if your distribution doesn't come with chkconfig read this previous post on how to install it CHKCONFIG on Ubuntu)

nfs is also reliant on some other processes to be running for nfs to work these processes are portmap, rpc.mountd,nfsd and rpc.rquotd except for portmap the nfs script will start the others up, however if you have problems with nfs you can check if these services are running by typing
rpcinfo -p

NFS is very straightforward to setup there is only one file you have to edit and that is /etc/exports
edit it and add the following
/directory_name_to_be_shared 192.168.0.0/24(ro,sync,insecure)
make sure there are no spaces between the allowed network and the first (

were 192.168.0.0/24 is the network that you want to make the share available to, this could be a single ip address, a few ip addresses separarted by commas a domain name etc
ro = read only (you can change this to rw for read / write access)
insecure = will allow access on ports above 1024

save your file then type
exportfs -a to activate your nfs shares

If you add more shares to your /etc/exports file just add them underneath one another and then type
exportfs -ua and then
exportfs -a

this will re-read any modifications that you may have made.