Can a client browse or otherwise enumerate the share directories that an NFS server is making available?

I get the feeling that this is what samba is for, to replace NFS but I want to make sure.

The only other ways I can think of to do this is either get root on the server and run showmount -e, or sniff traffic between the server and other clients who have an active NFS session running.

Thanks!

Are you sure that showmount works only on the server?

Here's what happens when I run showmount on the client:

############################
root@milleniumfalcon:/# showmount --directories
portmap getport: RPC: Success
root@milleniumfalcon:/# showmount --all
portmap getport: RPC: Success
root@milleniumfalcon:/# man showmount
root@milleniumfalcon:/# showmount -v
showmount for 1.1.0
root@milleniumfalcon:/# showmount -e
portmap getport: RPC: Success
root@milleniumfalcon:/# showmount -d
portmap getport: RPC: Success
root@milleniumfalcon:/# showmount -a
portmap getport: RPC: Success
###########################

I get these results whether the client has an NFS directory mounted or not.

You aren't including the hostname of the server when using showmount. If instead you want to list mount points on the client, you could grep the output of the "mount" command.

/usr/sbin/showmount --exports <server>
or
/usr/sbin/showmount --directories <server>

---

mount | grep nfs

Ah ha! Thank you, that worked, and makes much more sense.