NFS is the abbreviation for "Network File System".
NFS lets UNIX systems, connected by an Ethernet network, share file systems or partitions remotely (that is, over the network); it lets one UNIX system on the network share and access the disk space of another system on the network. This helps conserve disk space and allows the sharing of resources. For example, printers, or the on-line manual pages are often placed on an NFS volume for global access by everyone on the network.
An NFS client (the remote system) may mount a file partition of the NFS server (the system on which the actual disk space for the partition exists). This is all transparent to the user. The user can access the remote file system as though it were a local disk.
Article Change History:
06 Sep 1994 - Reviewed.
31 Aug 1992 - REVIEWED for technical accuracy
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