Step by Step Configuration of NTP Server on HP-UX Server

In this post, I would like to explain how we configure the NTP (network time protocol) server on HP-UX operating system server. In my recent post you can found the NTP configuration on Solaris and AIX platform. 

As you know NTP ( Network time Protocol) is one of the oldest internet protocol still in use and it allows the synchronization of computer clocks distributing UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) over the network. It is basaiclly used for time synchronization on Unix servers.

Step by Step Configuration of NTP Server on HP-UX:

1. In the first step we will check the configuration files of "xntpd" daemon. By default the configuration file for this daemon is "/etc/rc.config.d/netdaemons".

# vi /etc/rc.config.d/netdaemons

######################################

# xntp configuration.  See xntpd(1m) #

######################################

#

#  Time synchronization daemon

#

# NTPDATE_SERVER: name of trusted timeserver to synchronize with at boot

# (default is rootserver for diskess clients)

# XNTPD:        Set to 1 to start xntpd (0 to not run xntpd)

# XNTPD_ARGS:  command line arguments for xntpd

#

# Also, see the /etc/ntp.conf and /etc/ntp.keys file for additional

# configuration.

#

export NTPDATE_SERVER=

export XNTPD=0

export XNTPD_ARGS=

This is default configuration entry of this file so for xntpd daemon we need to change the variable which is defined.

export NTPDATE_SERVER='ntp.in.pool.org'

export XNTPD=1

export XNTPD_ARGS=

Note: You must change the NTPDATE server name.

2. For ntp config please set the correct timezone is setup in /etc/TIMEZONE file.

hpx:/> cat /etc/TIMEZONE

TZ=IST-5:30

export TZ

You can edit the file in vi editor and change the time zone as per your location.

3. Now, we need to make some changes in NTP configuration files. 

hpx29:/> cat /etc/ntp.conf

#Configuration NTP des serveurs

server ntp.in.org.com

server ntpin.in.org.com

You need to replace ntp server name accordingly. In my post I will use dummy server name.

4. After setting the NTP server name we need to restart the NTP service on HP-UX operating system and verify the ntp configuration.

hpx:/> /sbin/init.d/xntpd restart

hpx:/> ntpq -p

If it is showing you correct ntp server information now. You can match these information with the NTP server name which we use in above step.

Step by Step NFS Server and Client Configuration in HP-UX

In this post, I will explain step by step method of NFS server and client configuration on HP-UX operating system. Network File System is a distriubted file system which allows a client computer to access a file system that shared on another computer’s or server's.

NFS server is configured on the server locally on attached physically disk. On my HP-UX server i will configured the NFS server and for client you can use same HP-UX operating machine or other linux machine.

We can used the below NFS server IP and client IP on my own HP-UX machine and Linux machine.

NFS Server : 10.135.0.27 and share folder /backup

NFS Client : 10.135.0.2 and mount point /home/backup

Steps involved to configure the NFS Server:

1. First we will make sure both NFS server(10.135.0.27) and client(10.135.0.2) are accessible. After that we will make an entry in /etc/hosts or Configure it in DNS to resolve the IP if you use server name instead of IP address. But in our case we will use IP address instead of name.

hpx:/>vi /etc/hosts

10.135.0.27 hpxnfsserver

10.135.0.2 hpxnfsclient

The /etc/hosts entry would we same on both server and client machine so it can be accessible to each other.

2. In second step we will identify the folder to be export from server to the client. On my HP-UX server machine, I am going to export the folder /backup.

3. Now we will change the shared folder permission, normally we don't provide the read/write access to shared folder but in my case for testing purpose i will provide the (777) permission so that NFS client user can read/write the data on shared folder.

hpx:/>#chmod 777 /backup

4. In this step we change the NFS_SERVER=1 to enable your server to act as a NFS Server in the configuration file /etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf

hpx:/>vi /etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf

Change the NFS_SERVER parameter as follow.

NFS_SERVER=1

PCNFS_SERVER=0

START_NFSLOGD=0

START_MOUNTD=1

MOUNTD_OPTIONS=""

Save and exit the file.

5. In final step we will add an entry of our shared folder in the export file /etc/dfs/dfstab with proper permission.

#vi /etc/dfs/dfstab

/usr/sbin/share -F nfs -o rw -d “Test directory” /backup

Save and exit the file.

If you see the above line "/backup is shared folder and we will provide the "rw" read/write access to this folder.

6. Now please restart the nfs service on NFS server and make it permanent so after reboot of HP-UX server the shared folder is not umount.

hpx:/>/sbin/init.d/nfs.server stop

hpx:/>/sbin/init.d/nfs.server start

7. Using below command we can check the NFS folder is shared or not and also we can ensure which client can access this machine.

hpx:/>/usr/sbin/exportfs -av

shareall -F nfs

Steps involved to access the NFS shared folder to the NFS clients:

1. Now for NFS client configuration i will login on my Linux machine.In my case i will use my Centos machine as a client, You can select your NFS client machine as per your requirement.

2. On client machine, please select the mount point to where we have to mount the NFS shared folder /backup which we exported from NFS Server 10.135.0.27. On my Linux machine, I will mount it on /home/backup.

3. In this step we will verify the list of shares available on client machine. Please use the below "showmount" command to check which NFS shared folder is accessible.

hpx:/>showmount -e 10.135.0.27

export list for 10.135.0.27

/backup

If we get the output, server side export configuration doesnt have any problem between nfs server and client.

3. In next step we will mount the nfs share locally on our desintation mount point folder.

hpx:/>mount 10.135.0.27:/backup /home/backup

4. In final step, you can check the NFS mount folder using "bdf" command. It is show you the mount folder where all existing data is store. For testing purpose you can create any file on /home/backup.

Hope, you will like my this post, it is cover all the installation and configuration part step by step. Please let me know if you encouter any issue during NFS configuration on HP-UX machine.