HP-UX 11i June 2004 Release Notes

Disk and File Management
Mounting and Unmounting NFS File Systems Automatically Using AutoFS
Chapter 11
241
Mounting and Unmounting NFS File Systems
Automatically Using AutoFS
HP-UX 11i provides a daemon that mounts and unmounts NFS file systems
automatically. This feature is known as AutoFS.
AutoFS coexists with automount and performs the same functions as automount, but
has a new, more reliable design. Additionally, AutoFS supports the NFS PV3 protocol
whereas the automounter does not. The automount command has been replaced with a
shell script that will either invoke the old automount daemon or the new AutoFS
automount command, depending on the variable AUTOFS in
/etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf.
• AUTOFS=1 causes /sbin/init.d/nfs.client to start the AutoFS daemon
(automountd) and run the AutoFS automount command.
• AUTOFS=0 starts the old automount daemon. This is the default on newly installed or
updated systems.
The old automount executable is located at:
/usr/lib/netsvc/fs/automount/automount
The new AutoFS executables are located at:
/usr/lib/netsvc/fs/autofs/automountd /usr/lib/netsvc/fs/autofs/automount
When AutoFS is executed, a process used by its kernel code for kernel thread support is
also started. The autofs_proc process cannot be killed, except by a shutdown of the
system.
Impact
From an operational standpoint, AutoFS functions comparably to the old automounter
and returns the same values.
From the system administrator’s standpoint, however, AutoFS is started, stopped, and
updated differently than its predecessor. The nfs.client start-script automatically
starts and stops the correct daemons depending on the value of AUTOFS in
/etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf.
NOTE If you do not use this script, you need to remember which implementation of automatic
NFS file mounting you are using. Starting both AutoFS and automounter can lead to
problems accessing the remote file system. You must reboot to switch between AutoFS
and the old automounter.
Other Operational Differences
Any user-written scripts that expect the automount command to remain running as a
daemon will have to be updated either to not expect this behavior or to check explicitly
that automountd is running. AutoFS can no longer be shut down by killing the
automount process; instead, you must shut it down by executing the following command: