In nfs_lookup() we have /* * If we're doing an exclusive create, optimize away the lookup * but don't hash the dentry. */ if (nfs_is_exclusive_create(dir, flags) || flags & LOOKUP_RENAME_TARGET) return NULL; OK, fair enough - we don't need to find out whether it's negative or not for mkdir() et.al.; if it isn't, server will tell us to sod off and we can live with not having it in cache - in the worst case, we'll have to do the same lookup we'd skipped here at some later point. Same for rename(2) destination - if it wasn't in dcache, we are not going to bother with sillyrename anyway, and that's the only thing where we might care about the destination. If rename(2) succeeds, we won't see whatever had been there anyway, and if it fails, we won't lose anything from having lookup done later. What I don't get is why, unlike rename(2) target, mkdir(2) argument is handled that way only for v3 and later. It's been a long time since I looked at NFSv2 servers, but shouldn't we get NFSERR_EXIST if the sucker turns out to have already been there? What am I missing?