GEOM provides a simple mechanism for providing remote access to devices such as disks, CDs, and file systems through the use of the GEOM Gate network daemon, ggated. The system with the device runs the server daemon which handles requests made by clients using ggatec. The devices should not contain any sensitive data as the connection between the client and the server is not encrypted.

Similar to NFS, which is discussed in Section 30.3, “Network File System (NFS)”, ggated is configured using an exports file. This file specifies which systems are permitted to access the exported resources and what level of access they are offered. For example, to give the client 192.168.1.5 read and write access to the fourth slice on the first SCSI disk, create /etc/gg.exports with this line:

192.168.1.5 RW /dev/da0s4d

Before exporting the device, ensure it is not currently mounted. Then, start ggated:

# ggated

Several options are available for specifying an alternate listening port or changing the default location of the exports file. Refer to ggated(8) for details.

To access the exported device on the client machine, first use ggatec to specify the IP address of the server and the device name of the exported device. If successful, this command will display a ggate device name to mount. Mount that specified device name on a free mount point. This example connects to the /dev/da0s4d partition on 192.168.1.1, then mounts /dev/ggate0 on /mnt:

# ggatec create -o rw 192.168.1.1 /dev/da0s4d
ggate0
# mount /dev/ggate0 /mnt

The device on the server may now be accessed through /mnt on the client. For more details about ggatec and a few usage examples, refer to ggatec(8).

When the device is no longer needed, unmount it with umount so that the resource is available to other clients.