One of the possibilities to distribute files over the network is NFS (Network File System). NFS works together with network information services like NIS (see also Section 25.0, Using NIS or a directory service like LDAP (see also Section 26.0, LDAP—A Directory Service to handle the information about how to use the available services. To prevent unauthorized access, NFSv4 also makes it possible to use authentication with Kerberos (see also Section 39.0, Installing and Administering Kerberos. When configured correctly, it does not matter at which terminal users are logged in, they always find themselves in the same environment.
Like NIS, NFS is a client/server system. A machine can be both—it can supply file systems over the network (export) and mount file systems from other hosts (import).
In principle, all exports can be made using IP addresses only. To avoid time-outs, however, you should have a working DNS system. This is necessary at least for logging purposes, because the mounted daemon does reverse lookups.
All networked services heavily rely on a correct system time. If you intend to setup such services, one of the first things that should be configured is the time synchronization as described in Section 24.0, Time Synchronization with NTP.