AutoFS

The automounter is a piece of software that provides a mechanism for automatically mounting file systems when they are accessed, and unmounting them when they are no longer in use. Though the automounter was originally developed with NFS in mind, it works equally well for a variety of other file system such as AFS, SMBFS, and local file systems.

The automounter solves a couple of problems experienced in large, networked environments. First, it provides a means for easily managing access to network-based storage from a large number of clients. Second, it increases the scalability of both network file system clients and servers.

Autofs addresses the distributed management problem by allowing its configuration to be stored in any number of network based directory services, such as NIS, NIS+, hesiod, and LDAP. The centralized administration eases the job of the site administrator. Additionally, through the use of wildcard entries, new file systems can be made available to end-users without any configuration changes.

Autofs increases scalability by mounting only those file systems which are actively accessed on each machine. Because of this, networked file servers and clients can maintain less open network connections. Clients maintain the additional advantage of not suffering when a file server that is not being accessed experiences an outage.

The Linux Automounter

The current production version of the Linux^TM automounter is autofs version4. Autofs version 5 is currently in beta, due for release Real Soon, Now.

Both releases can be found on the download page.

There is a mailing list for discussion of automounter related issues: autofs@linux.kernel.org. You can subscribe to the list here. Or, you can browse the archives here or here.

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