NFS Services Administrator's Guide

Configuring and Administering NFS
Configuring and Administering AutoFS
Chapter 2 109
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.
You must enable AutoFS before any directories can be automounted. See
“To Enable the NFS Automounter” on page 89.
If AutoFS is already running when you add an indirect mount to your
configuration, you do not have to run the automount command unless
you change the master map. Any changes you make to an existing
indirect map will take effect the next time AutoFS mounts the directory.
However, changes to the master map 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 Indirect Automounts
Following are example lines from an automounter indirect map on NFS
client sage. The sharp sign (#) indicates a comment. Everything from the
sharp sign to the end of the line is ignored by AutoFS.