NFS Services Administrator's Guide

Configuring and Administering NFS
Configuring and Administering AutoFS
Chapter 2120
For more information, type man 1M automount or man 4
nsswitch.conf.
To Create a Hierarchy of Automounter Maps
An organization made up of many departments may wish to organize a
shared automounted directory structure. In the following example, the
shared top-level directory is called /org. The /org directory contains
several subdirectories, listed in the auto_org automounter map. Each
department administers its own automounter map for its subdirectory.
The automounter master map needs just a single entry for /org:
# auto_master map
# Directory Map Name
/org auto_org
The auto_org map looks like this:
finance -fstype=autofs auto_finance
marketing -fstype=autofs auto_marketing
legal -fstype=autofs auto_legal
research -fstype=autofs auto_research
eng -fstype=autofs auto_eng
And the engineering department’s map, auto_eng, looks like this:
releases bigiron:/export/releases
tools mickey,minnie:/export/tools
source -fstype=autofs auto_eng_source
projects -fstype=autofs auto_eng_projects
A user in the ‘‘blackhole’’ project within engineering might use the
following path:
/org/eng/projects/blackhole
Beginning with the AutoFS mount at /org, the evaluation of this path
would dynamically create additional AutoFS mounts at /org/eng and
/org/eng/projects. Since AutoFS mounts are created only when
needed, changes to maps require no action to become visible at the user’s
workstation. The automount command needs to be run only when
changes are made to the master map or to a direct map.