AUTOMOUNT(8)

NAME
automount - automatic NFS mount / unmount daemon

SYNOPSIS
automount [-d] [-tm secs] [-tl secs] [-m directory map] ...

DESCRIPTION
automount is a daemon that automatically mounts NFS filesystems when they are first accessed, and later unmounts them when they are idle.

automount creates a virtual filesystem mounted at one or more places on the client's file and directory hierarchy. Actual NFS mount points within this virtual filesystem appear as symbolic links. Reading a symbolic link triggers automount to mount the associated remote filesystem.

To make the trigger symbolic links used by automount distinguishible from normal symbolic links, the sticky bit is set in the mode flags for the link. Programs which would normally traverse symbolic links can test for this bit and avoid triggering the mount. Workspace Manager and ls have both been modified in this way.

Each virtual filesystem created by automount is governed by a corresponding map. One or more maps may be specified on the command line with a triple of the form:

-m directory map

Each map is rooted at the directory specified.

FILE MAPS
A map may be file or a special map. A file map is a regular file containing a list of entries of the form:

location mount_options server:path

mount_options must be a comma-separated list of options drawn from the options known to the mount and mount_nfs programs. automount will automatically mount the directory specified by server:path on the specified mount point within the map's virtual filesystem.

SPECIAL MAPS
In addition to reading files specifying mount maps, automount supports the -fstab map. This causes automount to read the fstab(5) database. All mounts with the net option will be mounted within the -fstab map's filesystem using a path of the form:

server/path

For example, if the fstab(5) database contained an entry for

polaris:/Library/Fonts

and automount was started as follows:

automount -m /Useful -fstab

Then the mount would appear in /Useful/polaris/Library/Fonts.

OPTIONS

-m directory map
    Associate the specified map with the given directory. The directory will be created if it doesn't exist. map may be the name of a file, or it may be the name of a special map. See the FILE MAPS and SPECIAL MAPS sections above.

-d  Run automount in debug mode. The program remains attached to the command line and sends debugging information to standard output.

-tm secs
    Set the timeout for NFS mounts to secs seconds. The default value is 20 seconds.

-tl secs
    Set the time-to-live for NFS mounts to secs seconds. The default value is 3600 seconds. automount periodically checks all its mounted filesystems. If it finds any filesystems that have been idle for this time-to-live value, it will attempt to unmount them. An unmount will only be successful if there are no processes with open files in that filesystem.

SEE ALSO
mount(8), mount_nfs(8)