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.\" @(#)nfs.4p 1.1 94/10/31 SMI; from UCB 4.3 BSD
.TH NFS 4P "24 November 1987"
.SH NAME
nfs, NFS \- network file system
.SH CONFIG
.B options NFS
.SH DESCRIPTION
.IX "NFS, network file system protocol"
.LP
The Network File System, or
.SM NFS\s0,
allows a client workstation to perform
transparent file access over the network. Using it, a client
workstation can operate on files that reside on a variety of servers,
server architectures and across a variety of operating systems. Client
file access calls are converted to
.SM NFS
protocol requests, and are sent
to the server system over the network. The server receives the request,
performs the actual file system operation, and sends a response back to
the client.
.LP
The Network File System operates in a stateless fashion using
remote procedure (\s-1RPC\s0) calls built on top of external data
representation (\s-1XDR\s0) protocol. These protocols are documented in
.TX NETP
The
.SM RPC
protocol provides for version and authentication parameters
to be exchanged for security over the network.
.LP
A server can grant access to a specific filesystem to certain
clients by adding an entry for that filesystem to the server's
.B /etc/exports
file and running
.BR exportfs (8).
.LP
A client gains access to that filesystem with the
.BR mount (2V)
system call, which requests a file handle for the filesystem itself.
Once the filesystem is mounted by the client, the server issues a file
handle to the client for each file (or directory) the client accesses
or creates.
If the file is somehow removed on the server side, the file handle
becomes stale (dissociated with a known file).
.LP
A server may also be a client with respect to filesystems it
has mounted over the network, but its clients cannot gain access
to those filesystems. Instead, the client
must mount a filesystem directly from the server on which it resides.
.LP
The user
.SM ID
and group
.SM ID
mappings must be the same between client and
server. However, the server maps uid 0 (the super-user) to uid \-2
before performing access checks for a client. This inhibits
super-user privileges on remote filesystems.
This may be changed by use of the \*(lqanon\*(rq export option.
See
.BR exportfs (8).
.LP
.SM NFS\s0-related
routines and structure definitions are described in
.TX NETP .
.SH ERRORS
.LP
Generally physical disk I/O errors detected at the server are returned
to the client for action. If the server is down or inaccessible,
the client will see the console message:
.RS
.BI "\s-1NFS\s0 server " \fIhost " not responding still trying\fR."
.RE
Depending on whether the file system has been mounted \*(lqhard\*(rq or \*(lqsoft\*(rq
(see
.BR mount (8)),
the client will either continue (forever) to resend the request until it
receives an acknowledgement from the server,
or return an error to user-level.
For hard mounts, this means the server can crash or power down
and come back up
without any special action required by the client.
If the \*(lqintr\*(rq mount option was not specified,
a client process requesting I/O will block and
remain insensitive to signals, sleeping inside the kernel at
.SB PRIBIO
until the request is satisfied.
.SH FILES
.PD 0
.TP 20
.B /etc/exports
.PD
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR mount (2V),
.BR exports (5),
.BR fstab (5),
.BR fstab (5),
.BR exportfs (8),
.BR mount (8),
.BR nfsd (8),
.BR sticky (8)
.LP
.TX NETP
.br
.ne 6
.SH BUGS
.LP
When a file that is opened by a client is unlinked (by the
server), a file with a name of the form
.BI \&.nfs \s-1XXX\s0
(where
.I \s-1XXX\s0
is a number) is created by the client.
When the open file is closed, the
.BI \&.nfs \s-1XXX\s0
file is removed.
If the client crashes before the file can be closed,
the
.BI \&.nfs \s-1XXX\s0
file is not removed.
.LP
.SM NFS
servers usually mark their clients' swap files specially to avoid
being required to sync their inodes to disk before returning from
writes. See
.BR sticky (8).