Chris

/net -hosts This used to show the "local neighbourhood machines" in the SunOS/Solaris domains I used to control.

The lines +auto.master automount: files nis nisplus

Means that your machine looks into the files, then nis and then nis+ for the mounts. As you found out before the server had a stop in its mounts for your specific machine.

If you want control over these then ONLY have "files" in the line and then the automounter is in your control. Or even make it [NOTFOUND=return] and then use the /etc/[v]fstab file to mount what you want.

Regards Keith

-----Original Message----- From: main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Eur Ing Chris Green Sent: 20 March 2007 12:14 To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: [ALUG] Automounter - need documentation on auto.master options

Although I have a sort of working solutionn to my original problem the automounter is still doing things I don't understand.

I'm having trouble working out how the automount daemon decides on what remote filesystems it should mount.

I have worked out that it's the file /etc/auto.master that controls what automount does but I can't really understand the syntax of that file - the man pages are a little opaque/obtuse.

My /etc/auto.master has the following entries:-

/misc /etc/auto.misc /net -hosts +auto.master

(Plus quite a few unhelpful comments)

I can basically understand the first line, that uses the file /etc/auto.misc to automount CD drives and floppy drives.

I don't really understand what the "/net -hosts" line does, I think it means that you'll get automounted directories in /net from hosts listed in /etc/hosts. Anyway it isn't mounting the directory I'm interested in.

What I really *can't* fathom out is that last line the "+auto,master", it seems to be making automount mount all sorts of things but I can't work out how or why. I *think* it's saying that automount should get an 'auto.master' file from the places defined in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file which has:-

automount: files nis nisplus

but I can't get to find how this actually works and I can't get to see what auto.master it actually uses. The command line nis utilities refuse to admit to there being any automount information. How can I get to see what 'automount' information is available?

-- Chris Green

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