Introduction

A fileserver is a machine other than your workstation, that keeps your files.
Usually, a single fileserver provides filesharing between multiple workstations.
There are a number of alternatives for sharing files:

• NFS
• Samba
• Rsync
• FTP-SFTP-TFTP

The following is a simple recipe for setting up a NFS server that is available to all machines in a subnet.
To set up a NFS server under TinyCore, you need 2 packages. (To setup a NFS client, you only need the first package.)

1. nfs-utils.tcz
2. filesystems-`uname -r`.tcz (note: shell backquotes to insert output of `uname -r` command.)

The appropriate tce-ab install option for both packages is OnBoot

The NFS server is configured by 3 files:

1. /etc/hosts.deny
   
2. /etc/hosts.allow
   
3. /etc/exports
   

You can get away with leaving hosts.deny and hosts.allow empty, however,
please keep in mind that this arrangement is only secure enough within a home network behind a firewall.

Also keep in mind that TinyCore puts its root filesystem “/” in RAM, which gets populated by an initrd file. (core.gz)
This also applies to the /etc directory. The boot options for persistence do not help for this directory.
If you want to keep some /etc files persistent, you must arrange for them to be copied from some persistent location into /etc at boot time.
The easiest way is to create a /opt/etc directory, and keep persistent copies of your /etc files there.
At boot time, copy everything from /opt/etc into /etc by some command in file /opt/bootsync.sh or /opt/bootlocal.sh

To share the directory /home/nfs for read-write access, create the file /etc/exports, and add a line like the following

/home/nfs 192.168.2.0/255.255.255.0(rw,async,no_subtree_check)

This will make the directory /home/nfs available for any machine in the IP subnet (192.168.2.xxx).
You can also specify exact IP adresses.

"/usr/local/etc/init.d/nfs-server start" 

If your TinyCore box with the NFS server has IP address 192.168.2.252 and a /etc/exports as shown in the previous text,
then you can access its files from any machine with an IP address like 192.168.2.xxx ; by entering the following command.

sudo mount 192.168.2.252:/home/nfs  /mnt/nfs

( See boot option nodhcp to obtain a fixed IP address for the server)

See also:

• http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/index.html
• http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,7940.msg42631.html#msg42631
• http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,10948.0.html
• http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,13923.0.html

Occasionally, you may need to do some tasks that can't be done through NFS file access alone.
On such occasions, command-line access through a remote shell can come in handy.
A solution for this, which is secure as well as reasonably cheap on resources is a Secure Shell.
You can use OpenSSH, or its light-weight alternative Dropbear. (both being more secure than plain old telnet)
If you want to use SSHFS, then please note that you will need a SFTP server on your TinyCore box.
Dropbear does not come with a SFTP server, but it can borrow the SFTP-server that comes with OpenSSH.

(Under construction)

(Under construction)