NFS v3 versus NFS v4

Another consideration regarding NFS is the version you'll be using. Nowadays, most (if not all) Linux distributions default to NFS v4. However, there are some cases where you may have older servers on your network, and you'll need to be able to connect to their shares. While NFS v4 is definitely the preferred version going forward, you might need to connect to a node using the older protocol.

In both cases, directories on a file server can be shared via NFS by editing the /etc/exports file, which is where you'll list your shares (exports), one per line. We'll go over this file in more detail in the next section. But for now, keep in mind that the /etc/exports file is where you declare which directories on your filesystem are available for use with NFS. Different versions of NFS have different techniques of handling file locks and they differ in terms of the introduction of idmapd, performance, and security. Also, there are other differences such as NFS v4 moving to TCP...