Chapter 9. NFS MOUNT Protocol

An NFS server provides a filehandle for each directory or file a client needs to access. It also provides a LOOKUP operation that lets a client name any directory entry and obtain its filehandle. An NFS client evaluates a pathname as a sequence of LOOKUP operations. It may seem strange, though, that the protocol provides no procedure to obtain an initial filehandle for the root of an exported filesystem.1 The initial filehandle is obtained using the MOUNT protocol (Figure 9.1).

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Figure 9.1 An NFS client cannot access any file on the server without first obtaining a filehandle via the MOUNT protocol. A client’s NFS ...

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