NFS Services Administrator's Guide (B.11.31.04) March 2009

In the Mounts in a Direct Map figure, mounts are configured in various places in the
local filesystem and not located under the same parent directory. In the Mounts in an
Indirect Map figure, all the mounts are configured under the same parent directory.
CAUTION: Any filesystems that are being managed by AutoFS should never be
manually mounted or unmounted. Even if the mount or unmount operation appears
to complete successfully, the resulting change of state to the AutoFS managed filesystem
can lead to disruptive or unpredictable results, including but not limited to: commands
hanging or not returning expected results, and applications failing due to their
dependencies on those mounted filesystems. A reboot may be necessary to resolve
these issues.
Automounting a Remote Directory Using a Direct Map
This section describes how to automount a remote directory using a direct map.
To mount a remote directory using a direct map, follow these steps:
1. If you are using local files for maps, use an editor to edit the master map in the
/etc directory. The master map is commonly called /etc/auto_master. If you
are using NIS, open the master map on the NIS master server.
If you are using LDAP, the map must be modified on the LDAP server. For
information on modifying maps, see the LDAP-UX Client Services B.04.00
Administrator’s Guide (J4269-90064).
If the direct map you just modified is not listed in the master map, add the following
entry to the master map:
/- direct_map_name [mount_options]
2. If you are using local files for maps, use an editor to open or create a direct map
in the /etc directory. The direct map is commonly called /etc/auto_direct.
Add an entry to the direct map with the following syntax:
local_directory [mount_options] server:remote_directory
If you are using NIS or LDAP to manage maps, add an entry to the direct map on
the NIS master server or the LDAP directory.
3. If you are using NIS to manage maps, rebuild the maps and push them to the slave
servers. For more information on management of NIS maps, see the NIS
Administrator’s Guide (5991-2187).
4. On each host that uses the map you have modified, enter the following command
to force AutoFS to read the modified map:
/usr/sbin/automount
82 Configuring and Administering AutoFS