HP-UX 11i June 2004 Release Notes

Disk and File Management
Enhanced AutoFS Available on Software Pack
Chapter 11
233
Features and Benefits
• On-demand mounting - Enhanced AutoFS mounts only those file systems that users
access; other file systems that are hierarchically related to these file systems are
mounted as needed. This increases the performance by preventing unnecessary
mounting and unmounting.
• Browsability - Enhanced AutoFS allows a user to view the directories that can be
mounted for indirect maps, without having to actually mount each file system.
• Device ID - Enhanced AutoFS uses the device ID of a mounted file system stored in
the /etc/mnttab file as a reference for a future unmount. This increases the
performance because during unmounting, Enhanced AutoFS does not have to
retrieve the device ID from the remote file system.
• Concurrent mount or unmount - Enhanced AutoFS performs concurrent mounts and
unmounts using a multi-threaded automountd daemon. This results in a
performance enhancement, which prevents services from hanging if a server is
unavailable.
• Reliable NFS ping - Enhanced AutoFS supports a -retry=n mount option for an
NFS map entry to configure the ping timeout value based on the network setup.
• CIFS Client support - Enhanced AutoFS has the ability to support HP CIFS Client.
• NFS loopback mount - By default, Enhanced AutoFS uses LOFS mounts for locally
mounted file systems. Enhanced AutoFS provides an option to allow loopback NFS
mounts for the local mount. You need to use this option in the High Availability NFS
environments.
Documentation
For further information on Enhanced AutoFS, see the following:
• Enhanced AutoFS Release Notes
• Enhanced AutoFS Administrator’s Guide
These documents are available on the Software Pack media and at
http://docs.hp.com.
For more information about Software Pack and how you can obtain Enhanced AutoFS,
see “Software Pack (Optional HP-UX 11i v1 Core Enhancements)” on page 58.