Re: NFS(?) file sharing from user account

[Tom Cook <tom.cook@adelaide.edu.au>]

spradlin@Princeton.EDU wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> If I have two computers: A (where I am root) and B (where I only have
> a user account), is there any way to share a directory between them
> over the network?
> 
> Even if I run an NFS server on A, I can't mount it from B because only
> root can mount.  And I've tried setting up the "user space NFS server"
> to run on B but it apparently needs to run as root (although perhaps
> I missed something).
> 
> I just want to have some way of accessing a common directory from A
> and B (preferably over an SSH tunnel).

I have a couple of ideas, none of them very good, I fear.

1. ftp - inconvenient, but easy.
2. scp - see ftp.
3. http - a bit esoteric, but doable.
4. samba - you can set up the server on A and use smbclient on B.
5. Get root to add your shared directory to fstab on B.  This is easily
the
     best option.

The user-space nfs daemon runs in user-space as opposed to kernel-space,
not just as any user.

I think you could probably get nfs forwarded over an encrypted channel
by using ssh to forward a port on the local machine to the remote
machine (so it would look like you were mounting an nfs drive on your
local machine) but you would have to figure out how to use a
non-privileged port for nfsmount since ssh will only forward
non-privileged ports for non-root users.

Regards
Tom