Skip to content
Advertisement

What’s the difference between a VFS and an NFS?

This might be a dumb question, but I’m struggling to find resources that clearly explain how a VFS is different from an NFS. Can they both be used for the same purpose?

Bonus question: Can you watch a VFS with inotify like you can an NFS?

Advertisement

Answer

“NFS” is a network filesystem that’s been around for decades. Wikipedia has you covered on that front.

“VFS” is a more generic term that simply means “virtual filesystem”. Within the context of Linux, it refers to the part of the kernel with which your user-space programs actually interact when they interact with “files”. The VFS layer then passes requests to a concrete filesystem driver — such as NFS, for example, or ext4, or others.

Read more here and here.

User contributions licensed under: CC BY-SA
5 People found this is helpful
Advertisement