fstab vs autofs
Patrick O'Callaghan
pocallaghan at gmail.com
Fri Nov 12 17:35:38 UTC 2010
On 12/11/10 10:47 AM, Tim wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-11-12 at 14:30 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:
>> What exactly is the advantage of using autofs
>> over an entry or entries in /etc/fstab ?
> Autofs only mounts the device when you/something requests access to the
> mount point. fstab will try mounting it at boot time, unless you add a
> noauto parameter. It's somewhat easier to add non-default options to
> fstab file, than tuning autofs to your requirements. Always-mounted
> network shares can be a problem if they're not reachable when you boot
> up.
>
>> Incidentally, the sample /etc/auto.master in Fedora-14
>> ends with the line
>> +auto.master
>> but I've been unable to find any explanation of this.
> See man auto.master
>
> For indirect maps access is by using the path scheme:
>
> /mount-point/key
>
> where mount-point is one of the entries listed in the master map. The
> key is a single directory component and is matched against entries in
> the map given in the entry (See autofs(5)).
>
> Additionally, a map may be included from its source as if it were it-
> self present in the master map by including a line of the form: + [map-
> type,format:]map[options] and automount(8) will process the map accord-
> ing to the specification described below for map entries.
>
> That sort-of explains it, even if not very understandable.
>
It's basically a throwback to NIS, Sun's Network Information Service.
The idea is that NIS (formerly Yellow Pages) maintains these maps as a
distributed database so the network admin can more easily configure
them. The whole thing is a PITA unless you really need it, which on a
single locally-administered desktop you don't.
poc
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