The mount protocol is separate from, but related to, the NFS protocol. It provides all of the operating system specific services to get the NFS off the ground -- looking up path names, validating user identity, and checking access permissions. Clients use the mount protocol to get the first file handle, which allows them entry into a remote filesystem.
The mount protocol is kept separate from the NFS protocol to make it easy to plug in new access checking and validation methods without changing the NFS server protocol.
Note: the protocol definition implies stateful servers because the server maintains a list of client's mount requests. The mount list information is not critical for the correct functioning of either the client or the server. It is intended for advisory use only, for example, to warn people when a server is going down.
The following XDR routines are available in librpcsvc:
xdr_exportbody xdr_exports xdr_fhandle xdr_fhstatus xdr_groups xdr_mountbody xdr_mountlist xdr_path
NFS Protocol Spec, in [a manual with the abbreviation NETP]
Created by unroff & hp-tools. © somebody (See intro for details). All Rights Reserved. Last modified 11/5/97