Servers and the Automounter

Automounter use is completely transparent to servers. A server has no way of telling whether files it shares are accessed using the mount command or using the automounter. As long as you set up your server file systems and share (export) them, you do not need to do any additional administration to plan for or set up the automounter.

When planning for automounter setup, you need a list of servers that have the file systems you want to automount and the path to the resources.

If servers are accessible to user logins, you should set them up like clients. The automounter on a server handles references to local file systems correctly. You must not mount local file systems at automount mount points.

Clients and the Automounter

As long as you use NIS+ to store automount maps, you do not need to do anything special to administer client systems of the automounter. If you use local /etc/auto_* maps, you must manually update them using editors, rcp, or rdist.

NIS+ Maps

When you use NIS+ with the automounter, all you need to do to set up and administer the automounter is to create and modify NIS+ automount maps. Chapter 8 describes how to create, modify, and delete entries in NIS+ automount maps.

The auto_master map must contain a list of mount points, optional mount options, and the names of the maps. The auto_home map must contain a list of usernames and the server and the path to each user’s home directory.

You can create additional maps, both indirect and direct, to provide access to executables, manual pages, source files, project files, or any other set of files that are made available from a server.