Joseph Herlant
version 1.0.0, 2014-07-07 : Initial version

1. Autofs

Naturally, you need the autofs package installed to play with autofs!

Files used with autofs:

  • /etc/sysconfig/autofs → Autofs daemon main confiugration file.

  • /etc/auto.master → Main map file containing the mounts mapping and references to other map files you may want to use.

Types of autofs maps:

  • special → Allows group mount without defining each one.

  • direct → Specifies mount point with absolute path.

  • indirect → Used to mount resources under a common parent directory.

Their lines syntax are: [pathname] [mount options] [location]

/etc/auto.master file example:
/misc     /etc/auto.misc     # Indirect maps file for parent directory "/misc"
/-        /etc/auto.direct   # Direct maps file
/net      -host              # Special map to mount all NFS resources found to subdirectories of the /net directory
+auto.master
Here the /etc/auto.misc file could look like:
cd         -fstype=iso9660,ro,nosuid,nodev  :/dev/cdrom    # Will be /misc/cd
linux      -ro,soft,intr                    ftp.example.org:/pub/linux
removable  -fstype=ext2                     :/dev/hdd
*          -rw,sync                         &:/home/&      # Mounts user home directories from all available NFS Servers
And the /etc/auto.direct file could look like:
/usr/data  -rw,sync       myserver:/data01/data

When modifying the autofs files, you should reload the service configuration (service autofs reload)