README for the NFS ioworker
===========================

This ioworker provides read and write access to exported filesystems
on NFS servers.  Any KDE file manager or application that uses KIO
can access them using an URL of the form

  nfs://[username@]servername[:port]/path

The server name is required.

Non-KDE applications can also open files via NFS, edit them and write
them back, as long as their desktop files are set up correctly.  KIO
handles all of this transparently.

It does not use the normal method of mounting remote filesystems on a
mount point on the client, but communicates directly with the NFS
server using RPC calls. Because of this it does not need root access
or any administrator configuration on the client, but see "Security"
below.

The ioworker supports only NFS protocol version 3. Version 4 is still
unsupported.


Security
--------

Because the ioworker runs as an ordinary (non-root) user, requests to
the NFS server originate from a non-privileged source network port.
Some NFS servers reject requests which do not originate from a
privileged port - the Linux NFS server with the default configuration
does this.  To access such servers the filesystem must be exported
with the 'insecure' option, see exports(5).

Warning: Because it is trivial to impersonate any user, and the need
to export filesystems 'insecure', NFS servers should be configured for
access using this ioworker only within private and secure network
environments.


Configuration
-------------

Normally the ioworker does not require any special configuration.  If
advanced control over its operation is required then settings can be
configured in the 'kionfsrc' configuration file, normally located at
'$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kionfsrc'.  There is no GUI, but this file can be
edited with any text editor.

Settings in the [Default] section apply to all NFS server hosts,
unless overridden by host-specific settings in a [Host SERVERNAME]
section.

The configuration keys and their values available are:

maxproto	(int)	The highest NFS protocol version that will be
			attempted.  The default is 4 (although NFSv4 is
			not actually supported yet).

minproto	(int)	The lowest NFS protocol version that will be
			attempted.  The default is 2.

usedirplus3	(bool)	If set and using NFSv3, then the READDIRPLUS3
			call will be used for directory listings.  This
			is more efficient, but some NFS servers do not
			support it properly so if the option is set to
			false then READDIR3 followed by lookup calls
			will be used instead.  The default is true.


Bugs
----

Please report any problems using bugs.kde.org, in the "nfs" category of the
"kio-extras" product.
