1AUTOFS(5) File Formats Manual AUTOFS(5)
2AUTOFS(5) File Formats Manual AUTOFS(5)
6
10 autofs - Format of the automounter maps
11
13 The automounter maps are FILE, NIS, NISPLUS or LDAP maps referred to by
14 the master map of the automounter (see auto.master(5)). These maps
15 describe how file systems below the mount point of the map (given in
16 the master map) are to be mounted. This page describes the sun map
17 format; if another map format is specified (e.g. hesiod), this documen‐
18 tation does not apply.
19 Indirect maps can be changed on the fly and the automouter will recog‐
21 nize those changes on the next operation it performs on that map.
22 Direct maps require a HUP signal be sent to the daemon to refresh their
23 contents as does the master map.
24
26 This is a description of the text file format. Other methods of speci‐
27 fying these files may exist. All empty lines or lines beginning with #
28 are ignored. The basic format of one line in such maps is:
29 key [-options] location
31 key
34 For indirect mounts this is the part of the path name between the mount
35 point and the path into the filesystem when it is mounted. Usually you
36 can think about the key as a sub-directory name below the autofs man‐
37 aged mount point.
38 For direct mounts this is the full path of each mount point. This map
40 is always associated with the /- mount point in the master map.
41 options
44 Zero or more options may be given. Options can also be given in the
45 auto.master file in which case both values are cumulative (this is a
46 difference from SunOS). The options are a list of comma separated
47 options as customary for the mount(8) command. There are two special
48 options -fstype= used to specify a filesystem type if the filesystem is
49 not of the default NFS type. This option is processed by the auto‐
50 mounter and not by the mount command. -strict is used to treat errors
51 when mounting file systems as fatal. This is important when multiple
52 file systems should be mounted (`multi-mounts'). If this option is
53 given, no file system is mounted at all if at least one file system
54 can't be mounted.
55 location
58 The location specifies from where the file system is to be mounted. In
59 the most cases this will be an NFS volume and the usual notation
60 host:pathname is used to indicate the remote filesystem and path to be
61 mounted. If the filesystem to be mounted begins with a / (such as
62 local /dev entries or smbfs shares) a : needs to be prefixed (e.g.
63 :/dev/sda1).
64
66 Indirect map:
67 kernel -ro,soft,intr ftp.kernel.org:/pub/linux
69 boot -fstype=ext2 :/dev/hda1
70 windoze -fstype=smbfs ://windoze/c
71 removable -fstype=ext2 :/dev/hdd
72 cd -fstype=iso9660,ro :/dev/hdc
73 floppy -fstype=auto :/dev/fd0
74 server -rw,hard,intr / -ro myserver.me.org:/ \
75 /usr myserver.me.org:/usr \
76 /home myserver.me.org:/home
77 In the first line we have a NFS remote mount of the kernel directory on
79 ftp.kernel.org. This is mounted read-only. The second line mounts an
80 ext2 volume from a local ide drive. The third makes a share exported
81 from a Windows machine available for automounting. The rest should be
82 fairly self-explanatory. The last entry (the last three lines) is an
83 example of a multi-map (see below).
84 If you use the automounter for a filesystem without access permissions
86 (like vfat), users usually can't write on such a filesystem because it
87 is mounted as user root. You can solve this problem by passing the
88 option gid=<gid>, e.g. gid=floppy. The filesystem is then mounted as
89 group floppy instead of root. Then you can add the users to this group,
90 and they can write to the filesystem. Here's an example entry for an
91 autofs map:
92 floppy-vfat -fstype=vfat,sync,gid=floppy,umask=002 :/dev/fd0
94 Direct map:
96 /nfs/apps/mozilla bogus:/usr/local/moxill
98 /nfs/data/budgets tiger:/usr/local/budgets
99 /tst/sbin bogus:/usr/sbin
100
103 Map Key Substitution
104 An & character in the location is expanded to the value of the key
105 field that matched the line (which probably only makes sense together
106 with a wildcard key).
107 Wildcard Key
109 A map key of * denotes a wild-card entry. This entry is consulted if
110 the specified key does not exist in the map. A typical wild-card entry
111 looks like this:
112 * server:/export/home/&
114 The special character '&' will be replaced by the provided key. So, in
116 the example above, a lookup for the key 'foo' would yield a mount of
117 server:/export/home/foo.
118 Variable Substitution
120 The following special variables will be substituted in the key and
121 location fields of an automounter map if prefixed with $ as customary
122 from shell scripts (Curly braces can be used to separate the field
123 name):
124 ARCH Architecture (uname -m)
126 CPU Processor Type
127 HOST Hostname (uname -n)
128 OSNAME Operating System (uname -s)
129 OSREL Release of OS (uname -r)
130 OSVERS Version of OS (uname -v)
131 autofs provides additional variables that are set based on the user
133 requesting the mount:
134 USER The user login name
136 UID The user login ID
137 GROUP The user group name
138 GID The user group ID
139 HOME The user home directory
140 HOST Hostname (uname -n)
141 Additional entries can be defined with the -Dvariable=Value map-option
143 to automount(8).
144 Executable Maps
146 A map can be marked as executable. A program map will be called with
147 the key as an argument. It may return no lines of output if there's an
148 error, or one or more lines containing a map entry (with \ quoting line
149 breaks). The map entry corresponds to what would normally follow a map
150 key.
151 An executable map can return an error code to indicate the failure in
153 addition to no output at all. All output sent to stderr is logged into
154 the system logs.
155 Multiple Mounts
157 A multi-mount map can be used to name multiple filesystems to mount.
158 It takes the form:
159 key [-options] [mount-point [-options] location...]...
161 This may extend over multiple lines, quoting the line-breaks with `\´.
164 If present, the per-mountpoint mount-options are appended to the
165 default mount-options.
166 Replicated Server
168 Multiple replicated hosts, same path:
169 <path> host1,host2,hostn:/path/path
170 Multiple hosts, some with same path, some with another
172 <path> host1,host2:/blah host3:/some/other/path
173 Multiple replicated hosts, different (potentially) paths:
175 <path> host1:/path/pathA host2:/path/pathB
176 Mutliple weighted, replicated hosts same path:
178 <path> host1(5),host2(6),host3(1):/path/path
179 Multiple weighted, replicated hosts different (potentially) paths:
181 <path> host1(3):/path/pathA host2(5):/path/pathB
182 Anything else is questionable and unsupported, but these variations will also work:
184 <path> host1(3),host:/blah
185
188 This version of the automounter supports direct maps stored in FILE,
189 NIS, NISPLUS and LDAP only.
190
192 automount(8), auto.master(5), autofs(8), mount(8). aut‐
193 ofs_ldap_auth.conf(5)
194
196 This manual page was written by Christoph Lameter <chris@waterf.org>,
197 for the Debian GNU/Linux system. Edited by H. Peter Avian <hpa@trans‐
198 meta.com>, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org> and Ian Kent
199 <raven@themaw.net>.
200 14 Jan 2000 AUTOFS(5)