NFS Services Administrator Guide (5900-3045, March 2013)

3 Configuring and Administering AutoFS
This chapter provides an overview of AutoFS and the AutoFS environment. It also describes how
to configure and administer AutoFS on a system running HP-UX 11i v3.
This chapter addresses the following topics:
• “Overview” (page 47)
• “Features ” (page 50)
• “Supported Filesystems” (page 52)
• “Supported Backends (Map Locations)” (page 53)
• “AutoFS Configuration Prerequisites” (page 54)
• “Updating from Automounter to AutoFS” (page 55)
• “AutoFS Configuration Changes” (page 56)
• “Enabling AutoFS” (page 57)
• “Notes on AutoFS Master Map” (page 57)
• “Deciding Between Direct and Indirect Automounts” (page 58)
• “Using Environment Variables as Shortcuts in AutoFS Maps” (page 63)
• “Using Wildcard Characters as Shortcuts in AutoFS Maps” (page 64)
• “Automounting Home Directories” (page 65)
• “Special Maps” (page 66)
• “Advanced AutoFS Administration” (page 69)
• “Modifying or Removing an Automounted Directory from a Map” (page 72)
• “Verifying the AutoFS Configuration” (page 72)
• “Disabling AutoFS” (page 73)
• “Restarting AutoFS” (page 73)
• “Troubleshooting AutoFS” (page 74)
Overview
AutoFS is a client-side service that automatically mounts remote filesystems. During system startup,
AutoFS is initialized by the automount command. The automount daemon, automountd, runs
continuously and mounts and unmounts remote directories as required.
When a client running automountd attempts to access a remote file or a remote directory,
automountd mounts it, if it has been configured. If the mounted remote filesystem is not accessed
for a certain period of time, it is automatically unmounted.
AutoFS uses maps to navigate the network. Maps define the mount-points that AutoFS will mount.
AutoFS can mount both directories and files. For more information on AutoFS maps, see “Maps
Overview” (page 49).
Following sections describe the different components of AutoFS that work together to automatically
mount and unmount filesystems, in detail.
AutoFS Filesystem
The AutoFS filesystem is a virtual filesystem that provides a directory structure to enable automatic
mounting of filesystems. It includes autofskd, a kernel-based process that periodically cleans up
Overview 47