Systems and methods for acquiring, releasing, and reclaiming a lock of a data structure in a network file system (“NFS”) are discussed. Generally, a text file is created in a management library of the data structure. The name of the text file includes an identifier of the lock, an identifier of a process attempting to acquire the lock, and an identifier of a machine on which the process attempting to acquire the lock is running. The identifier of the process attempting to acquire the lock and the identifier of the machine on which the process attempting to acquire the lock is running are is saved in the contents of the text file and a hard line is created pointing to the text file. Finally, a lock of the data structure is granted based on a number of links pointing to the text file.