How to install an NFS client on CentOS Stream, RHEL, and Fedora

An NFS mount on a Red Hat-family client fails before it reaches the server when the client-side utilities are missing. Installing nfs-utils adds the mount.nfs helper and supporting programs that let the standard mount command handle remote NFS exports.

Current RHEL, CentOS Stream, and Fedora repositories provide the client tools through the nfs-utils package. The same package also contains server-side utilities, but a client host does not need to enable nfs-server.service just to mount a remote export.

The package check proves the install path, and the helper version check proves the shell can execute the NFS mount helper. Kerberos-protected or TLS-protected exports need additional domain, keytab, certificate, or tlshd setup after the base client package is present.

1. Open a terminal with sudo privileges.
2. Install the NFS client utilities.

   $ sudo dnf install --assumeyes nfs-utils
   Dependencies resolved.
   ================================================================================
    Package          Architecture  Version              Repository  Size
   ================================================================================
   Installing:
    nfs-utils        aarch64       1:2.8.3-7.el10       baseos      489 k
   ##### snipped #####
   Complete!

   dnf is the standard package command on current RHEL, CentOS Stream, and Fedora systems. Older hosts that expose only yum use the same package name: sudo yum install nfs-utils.

3. Confirm the installed package.

   $ rpm -q nfs-utils
   nfs-utils-2.8.3-7.el10.aarch64

   The exact version and architecture differ by release. The package name should start with nfs-utils-.

4. Confirm the NFS mount helper path.

   $ command -v mount.nfs
   /usr/sbin/mount.nfs

5. Check the helper version.

   $ mount.nfs -V
   mount.nfs: (linux nfs-utils 2.8.3)

6. Confirm the export discovery helper path.

   $ command -v showmount
   /usr/sbin/showmount

   Use showmount to list exports when the server supports NFSv3 export discovery. For NFSv4-only servers, mount the known export path directly. Related: List NFS exports from a client
   Related: Mount an NFS export on Linux