Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Configuring a Workgroup
Sharing Files and Applications via NFS and ftp
Chapter 4398
Table 4-1 Deciding Which type of NFS Mount to Use
Ordinary NFS Mounts — Use an ordinary NFS mount when you would like the mounted
file system to always remain mounted. This is useful when the mounted
file system will be frequently accessed.
Automatically mounted NFS file systems — Use an automatically mounted NFS file system
when you want the file system to be mounted only when it is actively
being used. This is useful when the file system being mounted is used
infrequently.
AutoFS or Automounter?
Beginning with the August 1998 11.0 Extension Pack Release, HP-UX
offered a new automounting utility, AutoFS, in addition to the previously
existing Automounter. Beginning with HP-UX 11i v2, Automounter is
obsolete; it will continue to be supported on previous releases. You can
configure your HP-UX 11.0 through 11i v1.6 system to use either
Automounter or AutoFS.
If your system is currently running Automounter, you can migrate to
AutoFS, which has several advantages over Automounter:
❏ AutoFS can be used to mount any type of file system, including NFS
Protocol Version 3 (Automounter can be used only for NFS Protocol
Version 2).
❏ With AutoFS, the configured mount points are the actual mount
points (Automounter mounts directories under /tmp_mnt and creates
symbolic links from the configured mount points to the actual ones
under /tmp_mnt).
❏ You do not have to stop AutoFS to change your automounter maps.
The AutoFS daemon, automountd, runs continuously. When you
make a change to an automounter map, you run the automount
command, which reads the maps, then exits (Automounter has to be
killed and restarted whenever you make a change to an automounter
map).
For more information on how to use automatically mounted file systems, including AutoFS
and migrating to AutoFS, see Chapter 2 in the Installing and Administering NFS Services
manual.