NFS Services Administrator's Guide (5900-1632, August 2011)

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 51)
• “Supported Filesystems” (page 53)
• “Supported Backends (Map Locations)” (page 53)
• “AutoFS Configuration Prerequisites” (page 55)
• “Updating from Automounter to AutoFS” (page 55)
• “AutoFS Configuration Changes” (page 56)
• “Enabling AutoFS” (page 58)
• “Notes on AutoFS Master Map” (page 58)
• “Deciding Between Direct and Indirect Automounts” (page 59)
• “Using Environment Variables as Shortcuts in AutoFS Maps” (page 64)
• “Using Wildcard Characters as Shortcuts in AutoFS Maps” (page 65)
• “Automounting Home Directories” (page 66)
• “Special Maps” (page 67)
• “Advanced AutoFS Administration” (page 69)
• “Modifying or Removing an Automounted Directory from a Map” (page 73)
• “Verifying the AutoFS Configuration” (page 73)
• “Disabling AutoFS” (page 74)
• “Restarting AutoFS” (page 74)
• “Troubleshooting AutoFS” (page 75)
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