Automount

Automounter provides an on-demand method of mounting NFS file system and automatically unmounts them after a designated time period of inactivity (default 5 min).

For automount to work, autofs package has to be installed. The autofs uses so called "indirect" maps.

Automount maps configuration:
The master map /etc/auto.master: access directory indirect map file timeout in sec.

/mnt/home         /etc/auto.nfs-home      --timeout 60 
/mnt/software     /etc/auto.nfs-soft      --timeout 300
/mnt/docs         /etc/auto.nfs-docs

A client request to access a directory tree whose root is listed in the master map (such as cd /mnt/software) will cause the automounter to search the specified map for a server to satisfy the request.

The indirect map files,
/etc/auto.nfs-docs:

doc1  -ro,soft,intr  server1:/export/docs/doc1
doc2  -ro,soft,intr  server2:/export/docs/doc2

/etc/auto.nfs-soft

matlab   server1:/export/matlab  server2:/export/matlab

/etc/auto.nfs-home:

*   -rw,hard,intr  server1:/export/home/&

To start automount daemon, run

/etc/init.d/autofs start

After you modify the maps, run

/etc/init.d/autofs reload

To invoke autofs at the startup, run

update-rc.d autofs defaults

To verify that the autofs is running,

/etc/init.d/autofs status

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