Auto Mount

Re: how to automount on RedHat
From: Dave Martini <martini@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 09:43:15 -0800
I added nisplus to the automounts option in /etc/nsswitch.conf file and now I don't get the
RPC errors when starting/stopping autofs but I still can't cd to my directories.
Do I have to define everything in /etc/auto.master and do it that way and manually create
the directories on the client in RHEL 4? I was hoping the machine would automatically
get this information on the automount maps from my server which it seems to do
because when I do a ypcat -k auto.master I see all of my automount maps but I can't CD
to the locations it says no such file or directory.
I have an RHEL 3 machine where this does work and I don't have to put anything in
/etc/auto.master and I can cd to all of my logical locations no problem. Is this a change in
RHEL 4?
Dave.
Marq wrote:
Hi
To make auto mount work
first we have to configure to "/etc/auto.master"
It is like this
/autodir /etc/auto.misc
This means that the when we start the auto mount daemon it begins to monitor
the directory "/autodir"
second we have to create the directory on which we are going to mount and
that should be under the /autodir directory
third configure the "/etc/auto.misc" like this
/autodir/mountdir -rw,soft,intr
nfsserver:/nfsshare
then start the autofs daemon
"service autofs start"
On 31/10/06, Dave Martini <martini@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I'm trying to get automounts to work on my RHEL 4 machine. When I start
the autofs service I get these errors. How do I get it so it automounts
my directories from my NIS domain? I don't want to have to put each
mount in the /etc/fstab file if possible. I would like autofs to handle
it.
host1# service autofs reload
automount not running
host1# service autofs start
Starting automount: do_ypcall: clnt_call: RPC: Procedure unavailable
do_ypcall: clnt_call: RPC: Procedure unavailable
No Mountpoints Defined [ OK ]
[root# more /etc/auto.master
#
# $Id: auto.master,v 1.3 2003/09/29 08:22:35 raven Exp $
#
# Sample auto.master file
# This is an automounter map and it has the following format
# key [ -mount-options-separated-by-comma ] location
# For details of the format look at autofs(5).
#/misc /etc/auto.misc --timeout=60
#/misc /etc/auto.misc
#/net /etc/auto.net
# service autofs status

Configured Mount Points:
-----------------------do_ypcall: clnt_call: RPC: Procedure unavailable
Active Mount Points:

-------------------I have another machine RHEL 3 that automounts work on. Is it reading a
certain file on the machine to get this info? /etc/mtab shows all these
mounts but how does it get the info in there?
host2 # service autofs reload
Checking for changes to /etc/auto.master ....
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /us yp auto.home -rw,soft
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/modeler yp auto_modeler
-rw,soft
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/share yp auto_share
-rw,hard
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/statistic yp
auto_statistic -rw,soft
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/admin yp auto_admin
-rw,soft
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/www yp auto_www -rw,soft
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/cad yp auto_cad -rw,soft
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /apps yp auto_apps -rw,soft
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /home yp auto.home -rw,soft
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/ingres yp auto_ingres
-rw,soft
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/logs yp auto_logs
-rw,soft
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /eta yp auto_eta
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/voc yp auto_voc
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/oracle yp auto_oracle
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/hydrogeo yp auto_hydrogeo
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/data yp auto_data
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/s200hydrogeo yp

auto_s200hydrogeo
Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/s300hydrogeo yp
auto_s300hydrogeo
Start /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /ingdata yp auto_ingdata -rw,soft
failed to load map, exiting
Start /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /epd yp auto_epd -rw,soft
Start /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/doc yp auto_doc -rw,soft
Start /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/test yp auto_test
Start /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /seismic yp auto_seismic
Start /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/phoenix yp auto_phoenix
Start /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/gis yp auto_gis -rw,soft
Start /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/martini yp auto_martini
-rw,soft
host 2# more /etc/auto.master
#
# $Id: auto.master,v 1.3 2003/09/29 08:22:35 raven Exp $
#
#/misc /etc/auto.misc --timeout=60
#/misc /etc/auto.misc
#/net /etc/auto.net
#
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how to automount on RedHat

... When I start the autofs service I get these errors. ... How do I get it so it
automounts my directories from my NIS domain? ... failed to load map, exiting
...
(RedHat)
Automounts are not working

... I have a RHEL 3 system and can't do automounts on it. ... I restarted the
autofs service and I get this error. ... Is there another service I should check or
restart or is autofs solely responsible for automounting file systems? ...
(RedHat)
(13)
HowTo Setup Linux AutoFS

First of all, let me tell you that I am a fan
of the supermount feature that had been
floating around a long time but Linus was
stupid enough to overlook the potential for
benefit to home pc and work pc users. He
seems to be more interested in bringing
linux all that SMP stuff for extreme-used
webservers and other LAN server stuff.
Yes, we all can benefit from this as it
makes the OS better in lots of ways, but at
the same time some of the changes do
Well, if that would be so easy, there would

no need to make up a howto about this
feature, you know - the autofs feature is not
actually meant for drives with removable
media (so is the technical term) but it was
meant to automount harddisk on another
PC, somewhat like a windows network
share in SMB speak, similar to what the
samba service can do for you. This
automount scheme means that you just
need to try to access a /net-path (as
simply break the supermount feature over

and over again. The supermount feature
does currently work fine with all devices
that can signal their state to the kernel,
most prominently the modern ATAPI
cdrom device which can tell to the software
when the tray opens, so that the kernel can
always be sure that the same disk is in
there. But for stupid devices like a floppy
disk the supermount logic will be broken in
every third linux minor version you get just don't count on it.
Maybe I have to note that even RMS
(Richard M. Stallman) has asked on the
linux-kernel mailinglist whether linux
could be made to support a logic just like
windows/msdos had with their drive letters,
at least somewhat similar, and everybody
pointed to supermount as the name of the
feature. However, the supermount logic is
not the only answer to the actual problem all we really want is to insert a cdrom or
floppy disk into its drive and then just
access it, read it, write it, and take it out
again with no mysterious "mount" and
"unmount" commands inbetween - or see
the cdrom drive locked when forgetting
about it.
The other answer to the problem is
generally called "automounter" and some
kind of automount facilities and automount
daemons have a long tradition in unix
history - with the bsd automounter having
the fame to have been popular for quite a
time. The linux kernel does now ship the
necessary stuff to setup an automount
daemon, and these features work reliably.
Furthermore, all linux distributions will
ship along the autofs daemon and init.d
startup script to start the automounter - and
preinstall an /etc/auto.master and
/etc/auto.net configuration file.
AFAICS, Mandrake is the only distribution
specified in /etc/auto.net) and the

harddisk partition will be mounted to your
local disk tree for just as long as you need
it. When there is no activity on the netvolume then the automounter will
automatically unmount the network-share
again, and usually this is done after a
couple of minutes - just compare this with
your favourite screensave that blanks your
monitor after a few minutes (or even
"lock"s the desktop) and so does the
automounter daemon - it will "sync" all
changed-data back to the net-volume and
unmount it, just to be safe since the other
PC could possibly get shut down somehow.
However, we can use the automount
feature for us and some removable media
type drives on the local computer - the trick
is that we do not use an umount-timeout of
600 seconds (the internal default of the
autofs daemon) and we do not use 60
seconds either (which is the usual default
that most init.d/autofs scripts will use
or which you will find as "--timeout 60" in
the /etc/auto.master file) but we use a
much shorter value - something that a
common user will not recognize as a
timespan or anything the user could get
nervous about when waiting. Just choose a
timespan between 3 seconds and 6 seconds
and it will work. If you are going to install
the autofs feature for a user who does not
know about mount/umount in the first
place, then it is a good idea to use 3
seconds.
That way, you can write some data to the
floppy disk, and about three seconds later
the computer will actually write the data as
the magic "unmount" will have to sync the
data back that was just cached before in the
PC core. Likewise there is no problem
when you just read some data of the cdrom
and then quickly try to open the tray with
to ship a default kernel with supermount,

whereas autofs is available in all
distributions.
the button on the forefront. It might happen

that you see the disk locked in - but the
next hit on the button will finally open it
and give the CD back to you. Well, unless
of course some shell of yours is currently
still chewing on the directory of the disk
itself. Sometimes you have to look through
your "file commanders" and see to get out
of the cdrom's directory so that the
automounter can do the actual "unmount".
The Installation
On RPM based systems like Mandrake, Red Hat or SuSE installation - if it has not been
installed by default - is pretty simple: just install the autofs rpm using any of the package
managers. These distributions all ship autofs RPMs with their CDs, no need to go hunting
for it on the net. For Mandrake the quickest way to install autofs would be "urpmi autofs"
from a command line. And make sure to disable supermount as it might clash with autofs:
backup your fstab with "cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.supermount" and then issue a "supermount
-i disable" which will remove the supermount tags from the current fstab.
To actually set up the data, I do recommend that you do not add the removable-media
entries to the /etc/auto.net file - that would be misleading the user. Restrict
/etc/auto.net to hold disks shared on other computers or atleast disk partitions being
network centric and shared with other computers on your network. Instead, create a new
file called /etc/auto.vol since the term "vol" is the traditional unix-centric name of
what we are about to do - "vol" is short for "volume" and you might want remind yourself
of an analogy of a cd-changer with a dozen disk in the box but just one drive to actually
read one cd at a time. Likewise, the access path should start at "/vol" on your local system
and the "volumes" under that top-directory should be numbered - usually with a nameprefix telling the type of cd-changer or the computer holding the volumes. A traditional
name would say "cd-1" or "pc3-hdd".
In this example, I will use the dos-like names of our removable media called "/vol/a" and
"/vol/d" for the floppy and cdrom drive - this is in a way a numbering-scheme starting at
"a", passing "d" and "e" and going up to "z". Many linux distributions will start to setup a
scheme like "/mnt/floppy" but I guess you are fine with "/vol/a" too, and at the same time
this is a traditional unix way. Nice eh! :-)
okay, here is your new /etc/auto.master
# Format of this file:
# mountpoint map options

## /misc
/etc/auto.misc --timeout=60
## /net /etc/auto.net
--timeout=60
/vol
/etc/auto.vol
--timeout=3
Note that I did remove the "sample" /misc and /net mountpoints since my home pc does
not have a use for them. To let the timeout be passed right there in the /etc/auto.master
happens to be a relativly new feature with linux, many older distributions will require to
set a install-variable (e.g. suse 6.x) and in some cases you even have to modify the
init.d/autofs file.
Then (mkdir /vol ; chmod 775 /vol) to create the mountpoint on your disk - most
linux distribution do not have this old/common directory, they just have "/mnt" which is
used for some other taks too (e.g. the installation CDs might get mounted there) and so we
do not want to abuse it. Next we create the /etc/auto.vol file.
# Details may be found in the autofs(5) manpage
a
-fstype=auto,rw,sync,umask=002 :/dev/fd0
d
-fstype=iso9660,ro,nosuid,nodev :/dev/cdrom
which assumes you already have a symlink /dev/cdrom pointing to your cdrom drive
(which might be actually /dev/hdb).
And basically, this is it, now you need to restart the autofs daemon using
(/etc/init.d/autofs stop ; /etc/init.d/autofs start) and you can start
accessing "/vol/a" and "/vol/d". Well, you could of course make a some new icons on your
KDE desktop - just rightlick on the background and click on "new URL", then enter an
URL as "file:/vol/a" and choose an icon represting a floppy. The next time that you click
on that icon, a file-manager will pop up with "/vol/a" in its view - which is the floppy disk
of course.
Doing More With It

This scheme with an icon is however
needed for another reason - to guess why,
just let your file-commander point to
"/vol". So, what do you see. What?
Nothing? Well, that's good - as long as
there is no mounted volume then there
should not be an entry. This is very, very
important: about once a day, some cron
script will run over your harddisk and look
Well, you may have guessed now why we

called it "/vol/a". If you go and install
"cygwin" or some other unix-emulation
under windows, then this unix-layer will
map the local "A:" to "Z:" drives as direct
unix-tree paths calling them "/A" to "/Z".
We simply adopted this naming scheme for
a true unix system to access the floppy that
our windows would call "A:". I expect
for trash files, and cleaning up other stuff

like compressing manual pages and such
stuff. Nothing important, but this script will
often run the whole file tree and when it
comes to a directory like "/vol" it will scan
all the subdirectories of it - being possibly
removable media which are not there
(which would not be that much of a
problem - the subdirectory would be
empty). But when they are there then it
will happily scan your cdrom disk. And
that is not what you want, right?
At the same time, this is also a problem for
all those point-n-click programs being
around. Just try to open an image in "gimp"
being on the floppy disk. The gimp's "file
open" dialog box will open up and let you
choose the file in the file tree, but the
"/vol/a" directory does not yet exist and
there is now way to just say "/vol/a" to get
a list of files. You would have to remember
the path and filename on the floppy which is not quite convenient. But again,
there is a way around it: create symlinks.
The cron-find daemon above will not walk
across symlinks since he knows that a
symlink will end at a real file or directory
that he will come across at another time too
- and it would not be good to scan a
directory twice.
On the other hand, a symlink is just some
text, so it does not mount the disk unless of
course someone is trying to read the
symlink in the process of trying to open the
thing being at the other end of the symlink.
In that moment, the disk gets
locked&mounted in the cd drive making
the "/vol/a" path to magically appear in that
very moment. Just try yourself - insert a
floppy, and do (ln -s /vol/a /A) create a
symlink for "/vol/a" as the name "/A". Now
wait three seconds, so that the floppy gets
unmounted. Run (ls /vol) - and see nothing,
most users to be able to remember this

mapping as "/A". Right? :-)
But we can go even beyond that (which I
actually do on my system) and map the
msdos/windows drives too. Well, this
assumes that your linux installation has
detected the win98 partitions on your
harddisk and has put them into your
/etc/fstab. In many cases, these disk
partitions are mounted permanently to the
effect that the cron-find scripts will search
these drives too while running once a day.
Well, this is unnecessary, so let's remove
the corresponding lines from /etc/fstab
and add them instead to /etc/auto.vol ..
including setting up symlinks for easy
access.
Even more, I use some of my harddisk as a
backup storage and as a backside storage
so I can put the mandrake rpms (or the
complete cooker rpms) on that extra
partition. And since it is accessed through
an autofs point, it will not be searched by
the cron-find daemon nor will I be able to
wrongly delete some stuff there by mistake
- it is another partition anyway. To get yet
another benefit, just remember those
startup times when the screen says
"mounted too many times, check forced"
and runs "fsck" on your "fstab"-partitions.
The "auto.vol" partitions however are not
listed in "fstab", so that "fsck" would have
to be run manually .. once a year. Since it
is just some backup storage, this is not a
problem anyway - I do not run programs on
those partitions.
After all my, /etc/auto.vol looks like
this last table:
just an empty directory. Then run (ls /A ; ls

/vol) and see the "/vol/a" directory to be
there since you accessed it through "/A" in
less than three seconds before. This will
also work in "open-file" dialog boxes - just
use "/A" instead of "/vol/a".
# Details may be found in the autofs(5) manpage
## kernel
a
c
d
e
m
n
-ro,soft,intr
ftp.kernel.org:/pub/linux
-fstype=auto,rw,sync,umask=002 :/dev/fd0
-fstype=auto,rw,sync,umask=002 :/dev/hda1
-fstype=iso9660,ro,nosuid,nodev :/dev/cdrom
-fstype=iso9660,ro,nosuid,nodev :/dev/scd0
# the following
#boot
#floppy
#e2floppy
#jaz
#removable
entries are samples to pique your imagination

-fstype=ext2
:/dev/hda1
-fstype=ext2
:/dev/fd0
-fstype=ext2
:/dev/fd0
-fstype=ext2
:/dev/sdc1
-fstype=ext2
:/dev/hdd
02
07
12
13
1
3
5
6
7
8
-fstype=auto
-fstype=auto
-fstype=auto
-fstype=auto
-fstype=auto
-fstype=auto
-fstype=auto
-fstype=auto
-fstype=auto
-fstype=auto
:/dev/hda2
:/dev/hda7
:/dev/hda12
:/dev/hda13
:/dev/hdd1
:/dev/hdd3
:/dev/hdd5
:/dev/hdd6
:/dev/hdd7
:/dev/hdd8

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Re: how to automount on RedHat

From: Dave Martini <martini@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

"service autofs start"

On 31/10/06, Dave Martini <martini@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

# service autofs status

Active Mount Points:

Reload map /usr/sbin/automount --timeout=60 /erd/s200hydrogeo yp

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Prev by Date: ftp server stopped working

how to automount on RedHat

Automounts are not working

HowTo Setup Linux AutoFS

Well, if that would be so easy, there would

simply break the supermount feature over

specified in /etc/auto.net) and the

to ship a default kernel with supermount,

the button on the forefront. It might happen

# mountpoint map options

Doing More With It

Well, you may have guessed now why we

for trash files, and cleaning up other stuff

most users to be able to remember this

just an empty directory. Then run (ls /A ; ls

entries are samples to pique your imagination

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