AIX nfs export property change using smitty nfs on AIX cluster.

Hello Everyone ,

Today i am going to share how to change property of existing nfs share on AIX cluster setup, when existing exports file(/usr/es/sbin/cluster/etc/exports) is too large for editing and it generates some unreadable character while editing.

Scenario:

We had one scenario where, we need to add new host name to already exported NFS share on AIX cluster setup. Here host name was same but domain was changed and because of this issue nfs share showing error so application team requested us to delete previous hostname and add hostname with FQDN and do re-export. 

Lets see how we implemented and solved above mentioned scenario and which issue we faced.

Solution:

when we tried to edit existing exports file(/usr/es/sbin/cluster/etc/exports) on AIX cluster node we found that file is having too many entry of host name and we find it difficult to edit and also it generated some  unreadable character. so we decided that use smitty nfs to edit this file.

While doing changes to existing export make sure that you entered correct path name for "hanfs"config file and that is /usr/es/sbin/cluster/etc/exports.

* Pathname of directory to export                  [/clnfs]

  Anonymous UID                                              [-2]

  Public filesystem?                                        no

* Export directory now, system restart or both              both

  Pathname of alternate exports file                        [/usr/es/sbin/cluster/etc/exports]

Steps we followed to remove old host name and add same host name with new domain are as below:

1.

smitty NFS

2.

Change characteristics of existing NFS share

3.

choose nfs share name , here /clnfs

4.

version of NFS is 3

5.

remove old hostname with old domain and added same hostname with new domain

  HOSTS allowed root access                          [add hostname]
  HOSTS & NETGROUPS allowed client access            [add hostname]

  PATHNAME of Exports file if using HA-NFS           [/usr/es/sbin/cluster/etc/exports]

]

6.

press enter

after successful re-export make sure that nfs share exported correctly.

7.

at client side remount nfs export.

***issue we faced while doing re-export was, we faced error like below 

"exportfs: 1831-189 hostname: unknown host "

this error was saying that NFS server unable to resolve newly added hostname.

Solution:

we added newly added host name in following format on AIX NFS server in /etc/hosts file

IP      FQDN          HOSTNAME

and problem got resolved.

Thanks  !!!