NFS Services Administrator's Guide (762805-001, March 2014)

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 49)
• “Features ” (page 52)
• “Supported filesystems” (page 54)
• “Supported backends (Map Locations)” (page 55)
• “AutoFS configuration prerequisites” (page 56)
• “Updating from automounter to AutoFS” (page 57)
• “AutoFS configuration changes” (page 58)
• “Enabling AutoFS” (page 59)
• “Notes on AutoFS master map” (page 59)
• “Deciding between direct and indirect automounts” (page 60)
• “Using environment variables as shortcuts in AutoFS maps” (page 65)
• “Using wildcard characters as shortcuts in AutoFS maps” (page 66)
• “Automounting home directories” (page 67)
• “Special maps” (page 68)
• “Advanced AutoFS administration” (page 71)
• “Modifying or removing an Automounted directory from a map” (page 74)
• “Verifying the AutoFS configuration” (page 74)
• “Disabling AutoFS” (page 75)
• “Restarting AutoFS” (page 75)
• “Troubleshooting AutoFS” (page 76)
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 51).
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 49