Getting error chown: invalid group: ‘nobody:nogroup’ while setting up an NFS server drive ownership permission

Question

I am following this tutorial to export an NFS share drive.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-an-nfs-mount-on-ubuntu-16-04#step-2-%E2%80%94-creating-the-share-directories-on-the-host

I use centos7 as os.

In tutorial, below given statement given.

sudo chown nobody:nogroup /var/nfs/general

When I run the statement, followng error occurs!

chown: invalid group: ‘nobody:nogroup’

I also check /etc/group to understand if there is any group such as nogroup. And, It seems It does not exists. Following command return empty list.

cat /etc/group | grep nogroup

I have tried nobody instead of nogroup as below and it worked!

sudo chown nobody:nobody /var/nfs/general

Is the tutorial outdated. Should I use nobody instead of nogroup. Maybe some configuration missing on the system. What is the best practice for centos7. Please let me know!

thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The tutorial in the question is for ubuntu. I am working on centos. I realized and I fixed the issue as below.

sudo chown nfsnobody:nfsnobody /exports/test/

The tutorial where I found the command.

https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/setting-up-an-nfs-server-and-client-on-centos-7/