NFS

I assumed back in 2001 or so that by 2011 we'd have something better than crufty old NFS3, an NFS4 that no man understands in full, five half-implemented network file systems with stupid names, Solaris's WebNFS terroristic threat, and the aesthetic marvel that is CIFS. Alas, I assumed too much.

This page discusses Linux's kernel NFS implementation circa 3.0.4. Relevant man pages include exports(5) and nfs(5).

Sideband protocols

NLM

The Network Lock Manager (not to be confused with Netware Loadable Modules) provides byte-range advisory (SysV-style) locking.

• The no_auth_nlm exports option inhibits UID/GID credential check enforcement on lock requests, necessary for clients which don't preserve UID/GID across locking calls
  • The default behavior can be specified with auth_nlm or secure_locks
• Linux's NLM lock recovery only works if uname -n output matches reverse DNS output for your host.
  • Don't ask me, man; I didn't do it.
• NLM lock recovery also requires the rpc.statd process to be running, despite executing as a kernel service

See Also

• The Linux NFS FAQ