File sharing with PC-NFS clients

What Data ONTAP supports for PC-NFS clients

Data ONTAP supports the pcnfsd daemon, which provides authentication services for clients using PC-NFS version 1 or 2. Authenticated PC-NFS users can mount file system paths on your storage system just like NFS users. The pcnfsd daemon does not support printer service.

How pcnfsd authenticates users

When the pcnfsd daemon receives an authentication request, it can use local files or NIS maps to validate the user's password. The local file used can be the /etc/shadow file or /etc/passwd file. The NIS maps used can be passwd.adjunct or passwd.byname. When the shadow source is available, Data ONTAP uses it. The shadow source contains encrypted user information, instead of the password database.

The following list describes how the pcnfsd daemon uses local files or NIS maps for authenticating both PC-NFS version 1 and version 2 users:

If a shadow source is available, Data ONTAP uses the /etc/shadow file or the passwd.adjunct NIS map to determine the user's password.
If a shadow source is not available, Data ONTAP uses the /etc/passwd file or the passwd.byname NIS map to determine the user's user ID (UID), primary group ID (GID), and password.

How pcnfsd determines group membership

When the pcnfsd daemon receives a PC-NFS version 2 authentication request, it looks up the /etc/group file or the group.byname NIS map to determine all the groups to which the user belongs.

For detailed information

The following sections describe how to configure Data ONTAP for delivering PC-NFS service: