In the NFS environment, authentication refers to any of several security mechanisms by which an NFS server can accept or reject requests from NFS clients to mount an NFS shared directory. You can specify individual authentication settings for each NFS share and mount in your environment.
Authentication can be based on computer names, netgroups, networks, and/or DNS domains.
You can use multiple authentication methods for each NFS share, and you can define separate client access settings for each method you use.
The four NFS authentication methods supported by AdminSuite are AUTH_SYS, AUTH_DES, AUTH_KERB, and AUTH_NONE.
Authentication is a two-part process: the NFS host must support a particular authentication method, and an NFS client must be configured to use that same method. For example, for a client to successfully mount a directory using AUTH_SYS, both the client and the NFS host must be configured for AUTH_SYS.
If either client or host is not configured to use a particular method, and the client attempts to mount a shared directory using that method, the client will be handled as unauthenticated. Client authentication settings are stored on the client in the /etc/nfssec.conf file. These settings are augmented, particularly when using AUTH_DES or AUTH_KERB, with encrypted settings on one or more remote authentication servers.
See the Authentication topic in the Help Topics window for more information about authentication.