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How to configure NFSv4 authentication without Kerberos

NFSv4 offers a variety of authentication mechanisms like Kerberos. In fact, Kerberos is a popular authentication protocol.

However, if you want to use NFSv4 without Kerberos for authentication, that is also a possibility. In this scenario, NFSv4 relies on the RPCSEC_GSS authentication framework in order to authenticate clients and servers.

The RPCSEC_GSS authentication framework deals with data integrity protection. It is built on top of the Generic Security Services API (GSS-API). Furthermore, the GSS-API offers a standard interface for application-level authentication as well as security services. Additionally, it can be used with different security mechanisms, including Kerberos and RPCSEC_GSS.

In fact, we have to configure the RPCSEC_GSS framework on the NFSv4 client and server to use NFSv4 authentication without Kerberos. This includes generating as well as exchanging security credentials. These credentials help authenticate the client and server to each other.

How to configure NFSv4 authentication without Kerberos

According to our experts, the steps to configure NFSv4  without Kerberos depend on the operating system as well as the NFS implementation we are using. Here are the general steps to configure NFSv4 authentication:

• First, use the rpc.gssd command to generate security credentials on the NFSv4 client and server. This generates a unique security context for each host.
• Then, run the rpc.gssd command to exchange the security credentials between the client and server.
• Next, we have to configure the NFSv4 client in order to use the security context for authentication while accessing files on the NFSv4 server. This is done with the “mount” command with the “sec=” option.
• Finally, we must use the export file on the server to configure the NFSv4 server to enable access from the NFSv4 client with the security context for authentication.

After configuring NFSv4, clients can access files on the server with the standard NFSv4 protocol.

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Conclusion

To sum up, our Support Techs demonstrated how to configure NFSv4 without Kerberos.