From Protocol to Distributed File System

Hopefully, you are now getting some sense of how this protocol is turned into a file system across the client-side file system and the file server. The client-side file system tracks open files and generally translates application requests into the relevant set of protocol messages. The server simply responds to protocol messages, each of which contains all information needed to complete the request.

Reading A File: Client-side And File Server Actions

For example, let us consider a simple application that reads a file. In the diagram below, we show what system calls the application makes, and what the client-side file system and file server do in responding to such calls.