+.SS "Directory entry caching"
+The Linux NFS client caches the result of all NFS LOOKUP requests.
+If the requested directory entry exists on the server,
+the result is referred to as a
+.IR positive " lookup result.
+If the requested directory entry does not exist on the server
+(that is, the server returned ENOENT),
+the result is referred to as
+.IR negative " lookup result.
+.P
+To detect when directory entries have been added or removed
+on the server,
+the Linux NFS client watches a directory's mtime.
+If the client detects a change in a directory's mtime,
+the client drops all cached LOOKUP results for that directory.
+Since the directory's mtime is a cached attribute, it may
+take some time before a client notices it has changed.
+See the descriptions of the
+.BR acdirmin ", " acdirmax ", and " noac
+mount options for more information about
+how long a directory's mtime is cached.
+.P
+Caching directory entries improves the performance of applications that
+do not share files with applications on other clients.
+Using cached information about directories can interfere
+with applications that run concurrently on multiple clients and
+need to detect the creation or removal of files quickly, however.
+The
+.B lookupcache
+mount option allows some tuning of directory entry caching behavior.
+.P
+Before kernel release 2.6.28,
+the Linux NFS client tracked only positive lookup results.
+This permitted applications to detect new directory entries
+created by other clients quickly while still providing some of the
+performance benefits of caching.
+If an application depends on the previous lookup caching behavior
+of the Linux NFS client, you can use
+.BR lookupcache=positive .
+.P
+If the client ignores its cache and validates every application
+lookup request with the server,
+that client can immediately detect when a new directory
+entry has been either created or removed by another client.
+You can specify this behavior using
+.BR lookupcache=none .
+The extra NFS requests needed if the client does not
+cache directory entries can exact a performance penalty.
+Disabling lookup caching
+should result in less of a performance penalty than using
+.BR noac ,
+and has no effect on how the NFS client caches the attributes of files.
+.P