Administering the Secure NFS System

To use the Secure NFS system, all the computers that you are responsible for must have a domain name. Typically, a domain is an administrative entity of several computers that is part of a larger network. If you are running a name service, you should also establish the name service for the domain. See Oracle Solaris Administration: Naming and Directory Services.

Kerberos V5 authentication is supported by the NFS service. Chapter 19, Introduction to the Kerberos Service, in Oracle Solaris Administration: Security Services discusses the Kerberos service.

You can also configure the Secure NFS environment to use Diffie-Hellman authentication. Chapter 14, Using Authentication Services (Tasks), in Oracle Solaris Administration: Security Services discusses this authentication service.

How to Set Up a Secure NFS Environment With DH Authentication

1. Assign your domain a domain name, and make the domain name known to each computer in the domain.
2. Establish public keys and secret keys for your clients' users.

   Use the newkey or nisaddcred command. Have each user establish his or her own secure RPC password by using the chkey command.

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   Note - For information about these commands, see the newkey(1M), the nisaddcred(1M), and the chkey(1) man pages.

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   When public keys and secret keys have been generated, the public keys and encrypted secret keys are stored in the publickey database.

3. Verify that the name service is responding.

   For example:

   • If you are running NIS, verify that the ypbind daemon is running.

4. Verify that the keyserv daemon of the key server is running.

   Type the following command.

   # ps -ef | grep keyserv
   root    100      1  16    Apr 11 ?        0:00 /usr/sbin/keyserv
   root   2215   2211   5  09:57:28 pts/0    0:00 grep keyserv

   If the daemon is not running, start the key server by typing the following:

   # /usr/sbin/keyserv

5. Decrypt and store the secret key.

   Usually, the login password is identical to the network password. In this situation, keylogin is not required. If the passwords are different, the users have to log in, and then run keylogin. You still need to use the keylogin -r command as root to store the decrypted secret key in /etc/.rootkey.

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   Note - You need to run keylogin -r if the root secret key changes or if /etc/.rootkey is lost.

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6. Set the security mode for the file system to be shared.

   For Diffie-Hellman authentication add the sec=dh option to the command line.

   # share -F nfs -o sec=dh /export/home

   For more information about security modes, see the nfssec(5) man page.

7. Update the automounter maps for the file system.

   Edit the auto_master data to include sec=dh as a mount option in the appropriate entries for Diffie-Hellman authentication:

   /home    auto_home    -nosuid,sec=dh

   When you reinstall, move, or upgrade a computer, remember to save /etc/.rootkey if you do not establish new keys or change the keys for root. If you do delete /etc/.rootkey, you can always type the following:

   # keylogin -r