NFS Services Administrator's Guide (B.11.31.03) August 2008

/usr/sbin/automount
Example of Automounting a User’s Home Directory
User Howard’s home directory is located on the NFS server, basil, where it is called
/export/home/howard. Each client in the network has the following entry in the
/etc/passwd file on all the systems in the network:
howard:*:700:70:Howard:/home/howard:/usr/bin/ksh
When Howard logs in to any NFS client, AutoFS recognizes /home as an AutoFS
mount-point, because it is configured in the master map, as follows:
/home auto_home
AutoFS reads the auto_home map to find out how to mount Howard’s home directory.
It finds the following line:
howard basil:/export/home/& -nosuid
AutoFS substitutes howard for the ampersand (&) character in that line:
howard basil:/export/home/howard -nosuid
AutoFS mounts /export/home/howard from server basil to the local mount-point
/home/howard on the NFS client. Figure 3-7 illustrates this configuration.
Figure 3-7 Home Directories Automounted with Wildcards
Special Maps
There are two types of special maps: -hosts and -null.
By default, the -hosts map is used with the /net directory and assumes that the map
entry is the hostname of the NFS server. The automountd daemon dynamically creates
a map entry from the server's list of exported filesystems. For example, a reference to
/net/Casey/usr initiates an automatic mount of all the exported filesystems from
Casey which can be mounted by the client. References to the directory under /net/
Casey refers to the corresponding directory relative to the root directory of Casey.
The -null map, when included in a map entry, cancels a map for the directory
indicated. This is especially useful in the AutoFS master map, /etc/auto_master,
for cancelling entries that would otherwise be inherited from the +auto_master
include entry. To be effective, the -null entry must be inserted before the included
Special Maps 93