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

NFS Loopback mount
By default, AutoFS uses the Loopback Filesystem (LOFS) mount for locally mounted filesystems.
AutoFS provides an option to enable loopback NFS mounts for the local mount. Use the
automountd command with the -L option to enable the loopback NFS mounts for locally mounted
filesystems. This option is useful when AutoFS is running on a node that is part of a High Availability
NFS environment.
Client-side failover support
AutoFS enables a mounted NFS read-only filesystem to transparently switch over to an alternate
server if the current server goes down. AutoFS can make use of this feature if the NFS client supports
client-side failover. For more information on client-side failover, see “Enabling Client-Side failover”
(page 38).
Secure NFS support
AutoFS supports secure NFS filesystems if the NFS client supports mounting of secure directories.
For more information on Secure NFS, see “Secure sharing of directories ” (page 25).
Reliable NFS ping
In a congested network, the default timeout for an NFS ping may be too short, possibly resulting
in failed mounts. AutoFS supports the -retry= n mount option for an NFS map entry to configure
the ping timeout value. Increasing the value raises the probability for the ping to succeed.
Supported filesystems
AutoFS enables you to mount different types of filesystems. To mount the filesystems, use the fstype
mount option, and specify the location field of the map entry. Following is a list of supported
filesystems and the appropriate map entry:
AutoFS
mount-point -fstype=autofs autofs_map_name
NOTE: You can specify another AutoFS map name in the location field of the map-entry. This
would enable AutoFS to trigger other AutoFS mounts.
CacheFS
mount-point -fstype=cachefs, cachedir=/cache_directory, backfstype=nfs server:/source_directory
NOTE: You must ensure that the back-end filesystem, for example NFS, must be made
available. Also, the cache directory must have been created.
HFS
mount-point -fstype=hfs :/device_path
NFS
mount-point server:/source directory
NOTE: You must ensure that the source directory has been created and exported on the
server.
VxFS
mount-point /source_directory
NOTE: You must ensure that the source directory has been created.
NOTE: The examples specified are for AutoFS maps stored in plain files. You can use specific
tools to convert the maps to other supported backends, such as NIS or LDAP.
54 Configuring and administering AutoFS