NFS Services Administrator's Guide

Configuring and Administering NFS
Configuring and Administering the NFS Automounter
Chapter 264
If you are using NIS to manage your automounter maps, add the line
to the master map file on the NIS master server, and then issue the
following commands to rebuild the map and push it out to slave
servers:
cd /var/yp
/usr/ccs/bin/make auto.master
If you are using NIS+ to manage your automounter maps, issue the
following command to add an entry to the NIS+ auto_master table:
nistbladm -a key=”/net” value=”-hosts -nosuid” \
auto_master.org_dir
The local mount point (/net) should not exist.
This configuration change will not take effect until you restart the
automounter or reboot your system with the automounter enabled. See
“To Enable the NFS Automounter” on page 89 or “To Restart the
Automounter” on page 92.
The -hosts map is a “built-in” automounter map; you do not have to
create it. The -hosts map causes the automounter to mount all the
exported directories from any NFS server on the network whenever a
user or process requests access to one of the exported directories from
that server.
CAUTION Because the -hosts map allows NFS access to any reachable remote
system, a user may inadvertently cause an NFS mount over X.25 or
SLIP, which is unsupported, or through a slow router or gateway. Mounts
over slow links may cause excessive retransmissions and degrade
performance for all users.
When a user or process requests a directory from an NFS server, the
automounter creates a subdirectory, named after the NFS server, under
the local mount point you configured in the automounter master map.
(The conventional mount point for the -hosts map is /net.) Then the
automounter mounts all the exported directories from that server under
the subdirectory it created. Directories will stay mounted until they are
left idle for five minutes. The five minute default can be changed by
adding the -tl duration option to the AUTO_OPTIONS variable in the
/etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf file.