General Information

Automatically mounting network shares with autofs. This is the client configuration and assumes a working server setup with NFS or CIFS shares already.

Checklist

• Enterprise Linux 6/7
• Network server with shared directory (NFS or CIFS)

Pre-reqs:

• Assuming that all client/server regular nfs/cifs mounting works before continuing. See below for configuration.
  • NFS Shares
  • CIFS Shares

Install autofs

yum install autofs

/etc/auto.master ⇒ Main map file.

• First column = name of the mount point on the local client system
• Second column = config file that controls its mounting
• Third column (optional) = default mount options for all mounts defined in config file

Example

# File: /etc/auto.master
 
/home  /etc/auto.home --timeout=600
/-     /etc/auto.direct

• Direct Maps ⇒ Network file systems that are mounted from different servers or that don't all start with the same file system path on the same server.
  • Above example: /- /etc/auto.direct
• Indirect Maps ⇒ Directories on the remote server that can all be mounted under the same local mount point.
  • Above example: /home /etc/auto.home –timeout=600

Note: All direct map entries must be defined as “/-” in the auto.master file.

# File: /etc/auto.direct
 
/network-shares/nfs-share    -rw    192.168.1.151:/data/nfs
/network-shares/nfs-share2   -rw    192.168.1.151:/data/nfs2
/network-shares/cifs  -fstype=cifs,rw,credentials=/root/.ssh/.cifs-share  ://192.168.1.151/cifs-share

• First column ⇒ local mount point
• Second column ⇒ mount options
• Third column ⇒ remote shared directory

Note: This example works best when implemented using LDAP authentication to ensure that user id's are matched up between NFS server and clients.

Naming local and remote directories

# File: /etc/auto.home
 
yoda    192.168.1.151:/home/yoda
luke    192.168.1.151:/home/luke
vader   192.168.1.200:/home/vader

Naming local only (Ampersand Wildcard)

yoda    192.168.1.151:/home/& 

• The “&” is replaced by the key in the first column (yoda)

All wild cards (Asterisk and Ampersand Wildcards)

*    192.168.1.151:/home/&

• The “&” is replaced by the key in the first column (*)
• “*” is assigned the value that triggered access. If someone tried to access /home/luke, then “luke” will be the value of the key in the first column (“*”)

Start Auto Mounter

• EL7

  systemctl start autofs

• EL6

  service autofs start

Enable Auto Mounter on boot

• EL7

  systemctl enable autofs

• EL6

  chkconfig autofs on

Reload Auto Mount Config (to enable changes)

• EL7

  systemctl reload autofs

• EL6

  service autofs reload