RFC 2224 (rfc2224) - Page 3 of 11
NFS URL Scheme
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 2224 NFS URL Scheme October 1997 5. Public Filehandle NFS filehandles are normally created by the server and used to identify uniquely a particular file or directory on the server. The client does not normally create filehandles or have any knowledge of the contents of a filehandle. The public filehandle is an an exception. It is an NFS filehandle with a reserved value and special semantics that allow an initial filehandle to be obtained. A WebNFS client uses the public filehandle as an initial filehandle rather than using the MOUNT protocol. Since NFS version 2 and version 3 have different filehandle formats, the public filehandle is defined differently for each. The public filehandle is a zero filehandle. For NFS version 2 this is a filehandle with 32 zero octets. A version 3 public filehandle has zero length. 5.1 NFS Version 2 Public Filehandle A version 2 filehandle is defined in RFC 1094 as an opaque value occupying 32 octets. A version 2 public filehandle has a zero in each octet, i.e. all zeros. 1 32 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0| +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 5.2 NFS Version 3 Public Filehandle A version 3 filehandle is defined in RFC 1813 as a variable length opaque value occupying up to 64 octets. The length of the filehandle is indicated by an integer value contained in a 4 octet value which describes the number of valid octets that follow. A version 3 public filehandle has a length of zero. +-+-+-+-+ | 0 | +-+-+-+-+ 6. Multi-component Lookup Normally the NFS LOOKUP request (version 2 or 3) takes a directory filehandle along with the name of a directory member, and returns the filehandle of the directory member. If a client needs to evaluate a pathname that contains a sequence of components, then beginning with Callaghan Informational
