Installation guide
Overriding or Augmenting Site Configuration Files
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location
This refers to the file system location such as a local file system path (preceded with the Sun map
format escape character ":" for map names beginning with "/"), an NFS file system or other valid
file system location.
The following is a sample of contents from a map file (i.e. /etc/auto.misc):
payroll -fstype=nfs personnel:/dev/hda3
sales -fstype=ext3 :/dev/hda4
The first column in a map file indicates the autofs mount point (sales and payroll from the server
called personnel). The second column indicates the options for the autofs mount while the third
column indicates the source of the mount. Following the above configuration, the autofs mount points
will be /home/payroll and /home/sales. The -fstype= option is often omitted and is generally
not needed for correct operation.
The automounter will create the directories if they do not exist. If the directories exist before the
automounter was started, the automounter will not remove them when it exits. You can start or restart
the automount daemon by issuing either of the following two commands:
service autofs start
service autofs restart
Using the above configuration, if a process requires access to an autofs unmounted directory such
as /home/payroll/2006/July.sxc, the automount daemon automatically mounts the directory. If
a timeout is specified, the directory will automatically be unmounted if the directory is not accessed for
the timeout period.
You can view the status of the automount daemon by issuing the following command:
service autofs status
10.3.3. Overriding or Augmenting Site Configuration Files
It can be useful to override site defaults for a specific mount point on a client system. For example,
consider the following conditions:
• Automounter maps are stored in NIS and the /etc/nsswitch.conf file has the following
directive:
automount: files nis
• The auto.master file contains the following
+auto.master
• The NIS auto.master map file contains the following:
/home auto.home
• The NIS auto.home map contains the following:
beth fileserver.example.com:/export/home/beth
joe fileserver.example.com:/export/home/joe