Mounting MVS data sets onto a client mount point

To access an MVS™ file system from the client, client users use the mount command to create a temporary link (until unmounted) between specific MVS data sets and their UNIX directory (preferably empty) or an unused logical drive on their workstations. The empty UNIX directory or logical drive is called a mount point.

Client users use an MVS HLQ in the mount command to specify which MVS data sets to mount at a mount point. The MVS data sets beginning with the specified HLQ appear as files under the mount point.

Client users can mount a fully-qualified PDS but not a fully-qualified PS data set. Only cataloged data sets are supported by the z/OS NFS server. Tape data sets and generation data sets are not supported.

Some client platforms support both TCP and the user datagram protocol (UDP). Users can choose either TCP or UDP to access the server. The default protocol option depends on the NFS client platform. For NFS version 4, some platforms do not support UDP.

Note: When directly mounting on a fully qualified data set name, the server must return the mount size as part of getting the attributes for the mount. This can slow down the completion of the mount command.

Clients using the NFS version 4 protocol must pass mount requests to the server using a series of lookup operations. Client users may still use the mount command, and the client must convert the mount command into the lookup operations.