Enhanced AutoFS Administrator's Guide

Conﬁguring and Administering AutoFS

Shortcuts for AutoFS Maps

Chapter 3 51

You can use the ampersand character to represent both the remote

server and the remote subdirectory in the same line of the indirect map.

For example, if users’ home directories are physically located on many

different servers, but the directory under which the home directories are

located is called /export/home/

servername

on all the servers, the

following line in the /etc/auto_home map mounts all users’ home

directories from any server:

* &:/export/home/&

Consider that the home directory of user terry is conﬁgured in the

/etc/passwd ﬁle as /home/basil/terry. When Terry logs on, AutoFS

mounts the remote directory /export/home/basil from the basil

server on the local directory, /home/basil.

The line with the asterisk and ampersand characters should be the last

line in an indirect map. AutoFS reads the lines in the indirect map

sequentially until it ﬁnds a match for the requested local subdirectory.

The asterisk (*) character matches any subdirectory. Therefore, AutoFS

stops reading at the line with the asterisk character because it ﬁnds a

match. The lines in the map after the line with the asterisk character are

never read.

Consider the following example:

* basil:/export/home/&

charlie thyme:/export/home/charlie

If the /etc/auto_home map contains the preceding lines, AutoFS

attempts to mount /export/home/charlie from the basil host. The

asterisk character is a match for charlie; therefore, AutoFS does not

read the second line.

Now, consider the following example:

charlie thyme:/export/home/charlie

* basil:/export/home/&

If the /etc/auto_home map contains the preceding lines, AutoFS

mounts Charlie’s home directory from the thyme host and everyone else’s

home directory from the basil host.

For more information on the AutoFS conﬁguration, see the

automount(1M) man page.