Configuration Information
The installation process creates auto.master, auto.misc, auto.smb, and auto.net. Replace the auto.master file with the following commands as
the root user:
mv /etc/auto.master /etc/auto.master.bak &&
cat > /etc/auto.master << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/auto.master
/media/auto /etc/auto.misc --ghost
#/home /etc/auto.home
# End /etc/auto.master
EOF
This file creates a new media directory, /media/auto that will overlay any existing
directory of the same name. In this example, the file,
/etc/auto.misc, has a line:
cd -fstype=iso9660,ro,nosuid,nodev :/dev/cdrom
that will mount a cdrom as /media/auto/cd if that directory is accessed.
The --ghost option tells the
automounter to create “ghost” versions (i.e. empty directories) of
all the mount points listed in the configuration file regardless
whether any of the file systems are actually mounted or not. This
is very convenient and highly recommended, because it will show
you the available auto-mountable file systems as existing
directories, even when their file systems aren't currently
mounted. Without the --ghost option,
you'll have to remember the names of the directories. As soon as
you try to access one of them, the directory will be created and
the file system will be mounted. When the file system gets
unmounted again, the directory is destroyed too, unless the
--ghost option was given.
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
An alternative method would be to specify another automount
location such as /var/lib/auto/cdrom and create a symbolic
link from /media/cdrom to the
automount location.
The auto.misc file must be
configured to your working hardware. The loaded configuration
file should load your cdrom if /dev/cdrom is active or it can be edited to
match your device setup. Examples for floppies are available in
the file and easily activated. Documentation for this file is
available using the man 5
autofs command.
In the second line, if enabled, a user's home directory would be
mounted via NFS upon login. The /etc/home.auto would need to exist and have an
entry similar to:
joe example.org:/export/home/joe
where the directory /export/home/joe is exported via NFS from the
system example.org. NFS shares are covered on the next page.
This package could also be used to mount SMB shares, however that
feature is not configured in these instructions. For additional
configuration information, see the man pages for auto.master(5).
There are also web resources such as this AUTOFS HOWTO
available.
Boot Script
autofs installs its own boot
script, but it has no capability for logging or visual
conformance with other BLFS scripts.
Install the /etc/init.d/autofs
mount script included with the blfs-bootscripts-20130908 package.
make install-autofs
The time-out variable is set in /etc/sysconfig/autofs.conf. The installed file
sets a default of 60 seconds of inactivity before unmounting the
device. A much shorter time may be necessary to protect buffer
writing to a floppy if users tend to remove the media prior to
the timeout setting.