Enhanced AutoFS Release Notes, March 2004

Enhanced AutoFS Release Notes

What Is in This Version

The new features introduced with Enhanced AutoFS are as follows:

• 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 multithreaded 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.