Network file system

From Linux 101, The beginner's guide to all things Linux.

The Network File System (NFS) was developed to allow machines to mount a disk partition on a remote machine as if it was on a local hard drive. This allows for fast, seamless sharing of files across a network.

It also gives the potential for unwanted people to access your hard drive over the network (and thereby possibly read your email and delete all your files as well as break into your system) if you set it up incorrectly. So please read the Security section of this document carefully if you intend to implement an NFS setup.

NFS is comparable to NFS/CIFS file sharing on Windows, or Samba if you're on Linux.

A very well written HOW-TO is available on the projects website at http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/