RFC 2224 (rfc2224) - Page 3 of 11

NFS URL Scheme

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