NFS Services Administrator's Guide

Configuring and Administering NFS
Configuring and Administering AutoFS
Chapter 2 105
You must enable AutoFS before any directories can be automounted. See
“To Enable the NFS Automounter” on page 89.
Automounted directories stay mounted until they are left idle for five
minutes. The five minute default can be changed by adding the
-t duration option to the AUTOMOUNT_OPTIONS variable in the
/etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf file.
If you change the mount options, the remote server name, or the remote
directory name for an existing direct mount while AutoFS is running, the
changes you made will take effect the next time the directory is mounted.
However, if you change the local directory name in the direct map, or if
you change the master map, these changes will not take effect until you
issue the automount command to force AutoFS to reread its maps.
You can list executable automounter maps in the master map, or include
them in local automounter map files. Executable automounter maps
return a map entry on standard output when automountd supplies them
with a key to look up. If they cannot supply a map entry for the key, they
should return nothing. AutoFS determines whether a map is executable
by checking whether the execute bit is set in its permissions string. If a
map is not executable, make sure its execute bit is not set.
Automounted directories in the /etc/mnttab file contain the keyword
ignore to prevent them from being mounted at boot time.
For more information on AutoFS configuration, type man 1M automount
at the HP-UX prompt.
CAUTION File systems under the management of AutoFS must always be
maintained through AutoFS utilities, automountd and automount.
Manually mounting and unmounting AutoFS managed file systems can
lead to disruptive or unpredictable results, including but not limited to:
commands hanging or not returning expected results, and applications
failing due to their dependencies on these mounted filesystems.
Example File Entries for Direct Automounts
Following are example lines from an automounter direct map on NFS
client sage. The sharp sign (#) indicates a comment line.