NFS Services Administrator's Guide

Configuring and Administering AutoFS
Automounting Home Directories
Chapter 3124
Automounting Home Directories
To automount users’ home directories, follow these steps:
1. Ensure that the systems where users’ home directories are located
are set up as NFS servers and are exporting the home directories.
For more information, see “Configuring and Administering an NFS
Server” on page 46.
2. In the /etc/passwd file on the NFS clients, configure the home
directory of each user as the NFS mount point where the user’s home
directory is mounted. For example, if home directories are mounted
under /home, Claire’s home directory would be configured as
/home/claire in the /etc/passwd file.
3. If you are using local files for maps, create a file called
/etc/auto_home on the NFS clients, and add an entry for each user.
sammy thyme:/export/home/& -nosuid
The ampersand (&) character takes the value of the user name in
each line. User Sammy’s home directory is physically located on host
thyme in /export/home/sammy.
4. If you are using local files for maps, add the following entry to the
AutoFS master map, /etc/auto_master, on the NFS clients:
/home /etc/auto_home
5. Enter the following command on each NFS client that uses these
maps to force AutoFS to reread the maps:
/usr/sbin/automount
Example of Automounting a User’s Home Directory
User Howard’s home directory is located on NFS server basil, where it
is called /export/home/howard. Howard 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:
/home auto_home