Mounting NFS Share on Windows 10 & 11 with Write Access

It is easy to mount a drive from Linux NFS share on Windows 10 & 11 machines. To do that make sure you have NFS Client (Services for NFS) installed from Programs and Features. Following is the command to mount the NFS drive. Note that this command will run on cmd (Command Prompt) and not on PowerShell.

mount \<IP_ADDRESS>\<PATH_TO_DIR>\ drive:

For example, if the IP address of the NFS share is 10.235.0.10 and the directory you want to share is /var/www and you want to mount it to your Z drive, then you can run the following command.

mount \\10.235.0.10\var\www z:

But when you mount the drive you can browse the files using your Windows Explorer but you cannot create new files or edit any files.

How to enable write access on NFS share?

To get write access on NFS share you have to make a small change in the Windows registry before mounting the drive. Follow these steps.

  1. Open regedit by typing it in the search box end pressing Enter.
  2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ClientForNFS\CurrentVersion\Default.
  3. Create a new New DWORD (32-bit) Value inside the Default folder named AnonymousUid and assign the UID found on the Linux directory as shared by the NFS system. This is the UID of the user that has the write access to that directory on the Linux system.
  4. Create a new New DWORD (32-bit) Value inside the Default folder named AnonymousGid and assign the GID found on the Linux directory as shared by the NFS system. This is the GID of the group that has the write access to the directory on the Linux system.
  5. Restart the NFS client or reboot the machine to apply the changes.

Now run the mount command and you will get the write access.

Click here to read more about Microsoft Windows.

And click here to read more about Linux. 

Why we moved from OpenShift to Google Cloud

The good old days

When OpenShift was in its version 1 it was great from the customer’s point of view with a low budget. OpenShift v1 had free offers to deploy apps and add a custom domain to it. There was no SSL support but it could be handled via the CloudFlare solution, making the overall solution a great one.

Then there comes OpenShift v2

RedHat then launched OpenShift v2 and added a restriction that gears will be shut down after a certain period of inactivity and also removed the support for custom domain.

That was the time that we had to move to some other cloud platform that could support our apps with low resources and without investing anything. Because all good things in life are free.

Google Cloud to the rescue

So we came across the Google Cloud platform offering and we had $300 credit in a free trial for 6 months. That was more than enough for us to start with. And in fact, they have micro virtual machine instances that are free for life with 30GB storage. That is more than enough for small apps to run for free that are under experiment or don’t have any monetization plans.

So, we migrated several of our apps from OpenShift to Google Cloud and started leveraging free credits provided by Google.

Just this week we consumed all our credit and our trial expired. Our virtual machine instances were shut down, but it didn’t take long before we enabled billing on our project and downgraded our instances to micro ones which are free. That gave us such a relief that our apps are still running although with low resources but it is fine as they are not our revenue-generating apps and are just experiments.

Click here to read more about Google.

How to use wildcard domain with OpenShift hosting?

If you have a domain name and want to use OpenShift for hosting then using a wildcard domain name is a bit tricky with some domain registrars like GoDaddy. The reason is IP address of the app on OpenShift doesn’t remain the same and to use the wildcard domain a DNS A record is setup with the IP address of the hosting server. So, how do we make sure the following is true:

  • user enters mysitename.com > user sees www.mysitename.com
  • user enters mysitename.com/about.html > user sees www.mysitename.com/about.html

That is, the www prefix is always displayed anywhere on the site.

But due to the non-static IP of the OpenShift app, it is not possible to adjust the A record. But you can set up a CNAME with the following:

www > appname-username.rhcloud.com

where the format for the OpenShift app is

http://appname-username.rhcloud.com.

This means the site is accessible at www.mysitename.com but not at mysitename.com. To make it work you need to do the following.

On domain registrar like GoDaddy
– Create a new Record with
Record Type CNAME
HOST: www
POINT TO: appname-username.rhcloud.com

  • Setup Forwarding
    Forward to: www.mysitename.com
    Redirect: 301 (Permanent)
    Type: Forward only

On Openshift
1. Select Application tab > select application appname-username.rhcloud.com > click change
2. Enter the Domain name www.mysitename.com

That’s it! Wait for 10-15 min and see the magic.

List of FREE services & tools Startups should be using

I have curated a list of free tools, services, and apps that startups could and in fact should use to grow at the initial stage. Free doesn’t mean they lack quality, instead, these free tools are from top-notch companies like RedHat, Google, Asana, and GitHub and in all areas from infrastructure to version controlling to marketing and sales to project management.

Have a look at this list here and don’t forget to give your feedback.

I compiled this list a long time ago and recently updated it but it still might have some outdated links that I didn’t get a chance to update yet. Feel free to let me know and I’ll update it.

Enjoy!

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Resolving error in installing any gem by Ruby

After installing the Ruby installer you might need to install some gems. For example, if you are developing with RedHat OpenShift you want to install ‘rhc’ gem to access remote files on OpenShift. To install ‘rhc’ you would run the following command.

>gem install rhc

But you might get the following error, especially on a Windows machine.

>gem install rhc
ERROR:  Could not find a valid gem 'rhc' (>= 0), here is why:
          Unable to download data from https://rubygems.org/ - SSL_connect retur
ned=1 errno=0 state=SSLv3 read server certificate B: certificate verify failed (
https://rubygems.global.ssl.fastly.net/quick/Marshal.4.8/rhc-1.15.6.gemspec.rz)
ERROR:  Possible alternatives: rhc

Solution

The problem is due to running over a secure (https) connection to rubygems.org. Look at the help for “gem sources –h”, remove the https version and add http://rubygems.org

Run the following commands to do this.

>gem sources --remove https://rubygems.org/
>gem sources --add http://rubygems.org/

And now you can easily install any gem.

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