With the NFS version 4 protocol, text data and metadata are transferred between the server and client in the UTF-8 data format (ASCII text is not transferred directly). z/OS® NFS conversion of UTF-8 text data and metadata requires setting up a conversion environment using the z/OS Unicode Services by creating a Unicode conversion image that defines conversion tables with UTF-8 [CCSID 1208].

With the NFS version 4 protocol, stringprep provides preparation of internationalized strings. Stringprep helps ensure that character string input and string comparisons work consistently and correctly for users of multilingual text. The z/OS NFS server supports the UTF-8 encoding and stringprep requirements in the NFS Version 4 protocol, using z/OS Unicode services to normalize inbound UTF-8 encoded strings when comparisons are needed.

The server site attributes stringprep and nostringprep let you enable or disable stringprep normalization. You can use this attribute to disable stringprep normalization if necessary, for example if needed for compatibility with existing client workaround utilities. See Site attributes syntax for information on the stringprep attribute.