NBD README

Welcome to the NBD userland support files!

This package contains nbd-server and nbd-client.

To install the package, download the source and do the normal configure/make/make install dance. You'll need to install it on both the client and the server.

For compiling from git, do a checkout, install the SGML tools (docbook2man), and then run './autogen.sh' while inside your checkout. Then, see above.

Contributing

If you want to send a patch, please do not open a pull request; instead, send it to the mailinglist

Security issues

If you think you found a security problem in NBD, please contact the mailinglist. Do not just file an issue for this (although you may do so too if you prefer).

For embargoed issues, please contact Wouter Verhelst wouter@debian.org

Using NBD

NBD is quite easy to use. First, on the client, you need to load the module and, if you're not using udev, to create the device nodes:

# modprobe nbd
# cd /dev
# ./MAKEDEV nbd0

(if you need more than one NBD device, repeat the above command for nbd1, nbd2, ...)

Next, write a configuration file for the server. An example looks like this:

# This is a comment
[generic]
    # The [generic] section is required, even if nothing is specified
    # there.
    # When either of these options are specified, nbd-server drops
    # privileges to the given user and group after opening ports, but
    # _before_ opening files.
    user = nbd
    group = nbd
[export1]
    exportname = /export/nbd/export1-file
    authfile = /export/nbd/export1-authfile
    timeout = 30
    filesize = 10000000
    readonly = false
    multifile = false
    copyonwrite = false
    prerun = dd if=/dev/zero of=%s bs=1k count=500
    postrun = rm -f %s
[otherexport]
    exportname = /export/nbd/experiment
    # The other options are all optional

The configuration file is parsed with GLib's GKeyFile, which parses key files as they are specified in the Freedesktop.org Desktop Entry Specification, as can be found at http://freedesktop.org/Standards/desktop-entry-spec. While this format was not intended to be used for configuration files, the glib API is flexible enough for it to be used as such.

Now start the server:

nbd-server -C /path/to/configfile

Note that the filename must be an absolute path; i.e., something like /path/to/file, not ../file. See the nbd-server manpage for details on any available options.

Finally, you'll be able to start the client:

nbd-client <hostname> -N <export name> <nbd device>

e.g.,

nbd-client 10.0.0.1 -N otherexport /dev/nbd0

will use the second export in the above example (the one that exports /export/nbd/experiment)

nbd-client must be ran as root; the same is not true for nbd-server (but do make sure that /var/run is writeable by the server that nbd-server runs as; otherwise, you won't get a PID file, though the server will keep running).

There are packages (or similar) available for most current operating systems; see the "Packaging status" badge below for details.

For questions, please use the nbd@other.debian.org mailinglist.

Alternate implementations

Besides this project, the NBD protocol has been implemented by various other people. A (probably incomplete) list follows:

nbdkit is a multithreaded NBD server with a plugin architecture.
libnbd is a library to aid in writing NBD clients
qemu contains an embedded NBD server, an embedded NBD client, and a standalone NBD server (qemu-nbd). They maintain a status document of their NBD implementation.
A GEOM gate-based client implementation for FreeBSD exists. It has not seen any updates since 2018, and only implements the client side (any server should run on FreeBSD unmodified, however).
A Windows client implementation exists as part of the RBD implementation of Ceph for Windows.
lwNBD is a NBD server library, targetting bare metal or OS embedded system. It has a plugin architecture.

Additionally, these implementations once existed but are now no longer maintained:

xnbd: This was an NBD implementation with a few extra protocol messages that allowed for live migration. Its code repository has disappeared.
enbd: This was an NBD implementation with a few extra protocol messages that allowed extra ioctl calls to be passed on (e.g., the "eject" message for a CD-ROM device that was being exported through NBD). It appears to no longer be maintained.
Hurd translator: There was a proof-of-concept implementation of the NBD protocol once as a translator for The Hurd. We do not know what its current status is.
Christoph Lohmann once wrote a client implementation for Plan 9. The link he provided us is now stale; we do not know what its current status is.

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