NFS Services Administrator's Guide (B.11.31.03) August 2008

1 Introduction
This chapter introduces the Open Network Computing (ONC) services, such as NFS,
AutoFS, and CacheFS.
This chapter addresses the following topics:
• “ONC Services Overview” (page 13)
• “Network File System (NFS)” (page 14)
• “New Features in NFS” (page 15)
ONC Services Overview
Open Network Computing (ONC) services is a technology that consists of core services
which enable you to implement distributed applications in a heterogeneous, distributed
computing environment. ONC also includes tools to administer clients and servers.
ONC services consists of the following components:
• Network File System (NFS) enables you to access files from any location on the
network, transparently. An NFS server makes a directory available to other hosts
on the network, by sharing the directory. An NFS client accesses the shared
directories on the NFS server by mounting the directories. For users on the NFS
client, the directories appear as a part of the local filesystem. For information on
configuring and administering NFS, see Chapter 2: “Configuring and Administering
NFS Services” (page 25).
• AutoFS > is a client-side service that automatically mounts and unmounts
filesystems, transparently. AutoFS performs automatic mounting and unmounting
by instructing the user-space daemon, automountd, to mount and unmount the
directories it manages. For information on configuring and administering AutoFS,
see “Configuring and Administering AutoFS” (page 67).
• CacheFS is a general purpose filesystem caching mechanism that can improve the
NFS server performance scalability by reducing server and network load. For
information on configuring and administering a cache filesystem, see “Configuring
and Administering a Cache Filesystem” (page 109).
• Network Lock Manager (NLM) and Network Status Monitor (rpc.lockd and
rpc.statd) provide file locking and synchronized file access to files that are shared
using NFSv2 or NFSv3. File locking with NFSv2 and NFSv3 is advisory only. The
rpc.lockd daemon starts the kernel KLM server. The rpc.statd daemon
ONC Services Overview 13