Chapter 5. NFS Filesystem Model

The NFS protocol supports the common model of a hierarchically organized filesystem comprising named directories that group related files and directories. Each file or directory has a string name that is unique within the directory. Although this common model appears to be heavily biased toward the UNIX filesystem model, it encompasses many filesystems implemented on UNIX and other operating systems. The common filesystem model of NFS is largely responsible for the success of NFS as an interoperable protocol.

5.1 Filesystem and Filesystem Objects

A filesystem is a tree on a single server (usually a single disk or physical partition) with a specified “root” (Figure 5.1). UNIX operating systems provide a mount operation ...

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