Enhanced AutoFS Administrator's Guide

Configuring and Administering AutoFS
Automounting Home Directories
Chapter 326
Automounting Home Directories
To automount home directories, you need to perform the following steps:
1. Make sure the machines where users’ home directories are located
are set up as NFS servers. In addition, make sure the machines are
exporting the home directories. See the “Configuring and
Administering an NFS Server” section of NFS Services
Administrator’s Guide.
2. In the /etc/passwd file on the NFS clients, or in the NIS passwd
map or the NIS+ passwd table, configure the home directory of each
user as the NFS mount point where the user’s home directory will be
mounted. For example, if home directories are mounted under /home,
Claire’s home directory will be configured as /home/claire in the
/etc/passwd file.
3. If you are using local files for your AutoFS maps, create a file called
/etc/auto_home on the NFS clients, and add a line into the file for
each user; see the following example:
sammy thyme:/export/home/& -nosuid
The ampersand (&) character takes the value of the user name in
each line. In the previous example, user sammy’s home directory is
physically located on the thyme host in /export/home/sammy.
If you are using NIS to manage your AutoFS maps, add the line into
the /etc/auto_home file on the NIS master server. See the
“Configuring and Administering NIS” chapter of NFS Services
Administrator’s Guide.
4. If you are using local files for your AutoFS maps, add the following
line to AutoFS master map, /etc/auto_master, on the NFS clients:
/home /etc/auto_home
If you are using NIS to manage your AutoFS maps, add the line into
the /etc/auto_master file on the NIS master server.
5. If you are using NIS to manage your AutoFS maps, issue the
following commands on the NIS master server to rebuild the maps
and push them to slave servers:
cd /var/yp
/usr/ccs/bin/make auto_master