NFS Connection Configuration Between Multiple Clients/Servers

Question

I have several client computers (PCs) that need to connect to DRBD-replicated NFS servers. With NFS, I know you need to have the connection configured on both machines (e.g. client -> server and server -> client).

To avoid having to mess with configuration settings every time I add a new client to the network, I'm going to create an image with the appropriate settings to access the NFS share. However, I still need to figure out a way to get the server to automatically accept new client IPs in a secure manner.

Is that possible? Or, does this setup require manual intervention each time I bring a new client on (e.g. log into NFS and add IP of new client)?

Answer 1

I think that if you can afford to automatically accept new clients and add them to /etc/exports, from a security perspective you can also afford allowing access to an entire network or address range. Remember that you can use wildcard hostnames in /etc/exports like *.cs.foo.edu, as stated in man 5 exports.