Sunday, 28 December 2025

NFS - Network File System

Network File System (NFS) is used to mount external sources of files between Linux/Unix servers.

Nowadays, I think most people use SAMBA (SMB) as that also allows Windows to join the club, but I decided to try NFS (again).

I used to work with NFS back in the past, but it seems to still be viable.

On the server

We will be sharing the directory /mnt/raid.

I've edited the file /etc/exports.d/raid.exports to contain²:

/mnt/raid 192.168.2.0/24(rw,sync,no_root_squash)

rw: read and write access
sync: is the default, makes certain new requests only get a reply when changes have been committed to stable storage
no_root_squash: By default root files are re-mapped to nobody, to prevent write-access etc. in my case, I wish to edit files using root. I don't mind the security consequences very much in my home situation

To apply changes to this file, run "exportfs -ra" or restart the NFS server.

Start services:

# systemctl start nfs-server.service
# systemctl enable nfs-server.service

On the client

To view all mountable directories of a certain server, try this:

# mount | grep raid
watson:/mnt/raid on /mnt/raid type nfs4 (rw,relatime,vers=4.2,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,namlen=255,hard,fatal_neterrors=none,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,clientaddr=192.168.2.1,local_lock=none,addr=192.168.2.6)

Or of course try "cat /proc/mounts".

Then, on the client, mount the directory:

# mount -t nfs -o vers=4 watson:/mnt/raid /mnt/raid

Surprisingly, I did not have to actually change any configuration of the NFS service.

Works surprisingly well.

References

[1] Fedora Server User Documentation - File sharing with NFS – Installation: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/services/filesharing-nfs-installation/
[2] My Blog - My Current MDADM Setup: https://randomthoughtsonjavaprogramming.blogspot.com/2024/09/my-current-mdadm-setup.html

Friday, 12 December 2025

Git: Deleting old local branches

Just looking at old local branches. They tend to proliferate, especially if you have a release cadence.

To list the local branches (the default), or list the branches according to a pattern, see the two examples directly below.

git branch
git branch --list "V2022*"

Small explanation of the output of the command:

existing branches are listed
the current branch will be highlighted in green and marked with an asterisk
any branches checked out in linked worktrees will be highlighted in cyan and marked with a plus sign

I'm usually only interested in local branches, but "-r" shows remote-tracking branches and "-a" shows both remote and local branches, if you're interested.

Removing branches

git branch -D `git branch --list "V2022*"`

Bear in mind that branches that are used by a worktree cannot be deleted. Remove the worktree first.

Actually, I really like that behaviour.

Checking old branches

Apparently you can sort the list of branches based on last comitterdate.

git branch --sort=-committerdate # DESC

In the example above, you'll see branches that have been committed to recently at the top.

Finding a commit

This is nice, you can find which branches contain a certain commit quickly.

git branch --list --contains 089aafb331a08d19ed805fff6fea3846776980a0

Unfortunately, we're currently using git as a local repo, and svn remote, so there's a disconnect between commit hashes.

References

Git - git branch documentation: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-branch
StackOverflow - Can you delete multiple branches in one command with Git?: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3670355/can-you-delete-multiple-branches-in-one-command-with-git