Changes in Version 3 from Version 2

The root and writecache operations have been removed. A mknod operation has been defined to allow the creation of special files, thus eliminating the overloading of create. Caching on the client is not defined nor dictated by Version 3. Additional information and hints have been added to Version 3 to allow clieints that implement caching to manage their caches more effectively.

Operations that affect the attributes of a file or directory may now return the new attributes after the operation has completed to optimize out a subsequent getattr used in validating attribute caches. Also, operations that modify the directory in which the target object resides return the old and new attribues of the directory to allow clients to implement more intelligent cache invalidation procedures.

The access operation provides access permission checking on the server. The fsstat operation returns static information about a file system and server. The readdirplus operation returns file handles and attributes in additional to directory entries. The pathconf operation returns POSIX pathconf information about a file.