The basic procedure to be able to access your sgi machine is the following:

• Choose the directory you want to export on your OSX machine.
• Use NetInfo Manager to export the directory via NFS.
• Mount the directory on your sgi system.

This example will use NetInfo Manager on the Mac....the system tool used for managing hosts and mount points. There is an OSX tool called NFSManager (Click here to go to NFSManager Website) which provides a nice gui to configuring nfs mounts. I'd recommend using NFSManager for this instead of doing it the NetInfo way, but I figured it was best to go through the basics first and then show the settings appropriate for NFSManager.

Disclaimer: Installing software and making changes on the sgi system requires root privileges, which means you can seriously mess things up if you do something wrong. By making modifications to the system you have the potential of accidentally deleting or moving and changing important files which the system may need, rendering your system useless. If you aren't confident about making changes, please don't do it.

Create the Directory For Exporting

On the OSX system, create the directory that you want to export. This might be in your home directory. If you created a directory called "files" in your home directory, the path would be: "/Users/your_name/files". If the directory is on another hard drive or partition, the path is a bit longer. Suppose you have a second disk called "Data" and you create the directory called "files" in it which you want to share. Since this directory is not on your startup partition, the path would be "/Volumes/Data/files".

A bit of MacOSX sharing theory.... Sharing files between users under OSX are subject to unix-style permissions restrictions, so having other users access your home directory can be problematic compared to OS9. We work around this by having a large second partition or second hard drive called "[MacName]Data" where we store all of our job files. You can allow all users read and write privileges on this disk very easily. In the Finder, select the disk. Press Command-I (or select Show Info from the File menu). Change the pop-up to Privileges. Then check the box "Ignore privleges on this volume" and press the Apply button. This allows all users easy access to the storage drive. We created a directory called "xfer" on the data drive. So for the rest of the examples, I'll use that folder as the basis of the example. The full unix path to the folder would be: /Volumes/Inferno2Data/xfer.

The next thing that you have to do is use NetInfo Manager to add your discreet machine to the list of TCP/IP hosts. You will need admin privileges on your OSX Macintosh to do this. Open NetInfo Manager (it is located in /Applications/Utilities). Click on the lock to enable changes to the NetInfo information. You will need to enter your administrator password.

Check the second column under the Directory Browser. If there is an line which says "exports", you can skip the next several steps (continue on to the "Create the Export" step, below). If exports isn't listed, click on the first column (far left ) of the Directory browser (as shown to the right). The line will turn a darker gray.

Type Command-N (or select New Subdirectory from the Directory menu). A new line will appear in the bottom part of the window. Double-click on "new_directory" underneath the Value(s) column. This will allow you to modify the field. Type "exports". Save the new line by pressing Command-S (or selecting Save from the Domains menu). Confirm that you want to modify the settings.

Create the Export

Click on the exports line in the second column of the Directory browser (as shown to the right). The line will turn a darker gray.

Type Command-N (or select New Subdirectory from the Directory menu). A new line will appear in the bottom part of the window. Click once on the line you just created in the bottom part of the NetInfo window (as shown to the right). The line will turn a darker gray.

Type Shift-Command-N (or select New Property from the Directory menu) twice. You will now have a total of three lines of properties to enter. Enter the following in the bottom half of the browser: property: name value: Enter the full path to the folder you want to share. For our example it is /Volumes/Inferno2Data/xfer property: clients value: Enter the hosts you want to have access. These are the host names as defined under the "machines" property. property: opts value: mapall=root

You should now have something that looks like this:

Save the settings by pressing Command-S (or selecting Save from the Domains menu). Confirm that you want to modify the settings.

You'll need to restart your Mac to enable the new NFS exports.

Create the Mounts on the sgi Machine

First off, make sure that your macintosh is part of the /etc/hosts file on your sgi system (see the other OSX NFS tip for instructions).

Next, decide where you want to mount the directory on your sgi system. For example, we have have our machines mounted at the /usr level on the sgi machine.

Become super-user.

Create your mount directory on the sgi. We'll create ours at /user/inferno2mac. In the shell, type:

% mkdir /usr/inferno2mac

Next, we need to modify the /etc/fstab file. This is the file where NFS mounts are defined. You can use nedit to modify the file.

% nedit /etc/fstab

Add the following line to the bottom of the file using the following format:

• [mac_host_in_etc/hosts] : [path_on_mac_host] [mount_point_on_sgi] nfs rw,bg,soft 0 0

For our example, it would look like this:

inferno2mac:/Volumes/Inferno2Data/xfer         /usr/inferno2mac       nfs rw,bg,soft 0 0

Save the file.

In the shell type the following to mount the directory:

% mount -a

You should now be able to cd into the directory and see the files.