AUTOFS(5)							File Formats Manual							 AUTOFS(5)

AUTOFS(5)							File Formats Manual							 AUTOFS(5)

NAME

       autofs - Format of the automounter maps

DESCRIPTION

       The automounter maps are FILE, NIS, NISPLUS or LDAP maps referred to by the master map of the automounter (see auto.master(5)).	These maps
       describe how file systems below the mount point of the map (given in the master map) are to be mounted.	This page describes  the  sun  map
       format; if another map format is specified (e.g. hesiod), this documentation does not apply.

       Indirect  maps  can  be	changed  on the fly and the automouter will recognize those changes on the next operation it performs on that map.
       Direct maps require a HUP signal be sent to the daemon to refresh their contents as does the master map.

FORMAT

       This is a description of the text file format.  Other methods of specifying these files may exist.  All empty lines or lines beginning with
       # are ignored. The basic format of one line in such maps is:

       key [-options] location

   key
       For  indirect mounts this is the part of the path name between the mount point and the path into the filesystem when it is mounted. Usually
       you can think about the key as a sub-directory name below the autofs managed mount point.

       For direct mounts this is the full path of each mount point. This map is always associated with the /- mount point in the master map.

   options
       Zero or more options may be given.  Options can also be given in the auto.master file in which case both values are cumulative (this  is  a
       difference  from  SunOS).   The	options are a list of comma separated options as customary for the mount(8) command. There are two special
       options -fstype= used to specify a filesystem type if the filesystem is not of the default NFS type.  This option is processed by the auto-
       mounter and not by the mount command.  -strict is used to treat errors when mounting file systems as fatal. This is important when multiple
       file systems should be mounted (`multi-mounts'). If this option is given, no file system is mounted at all if  at  least  one  file  system
       can't be mounted.

   location
       The  location  specifies  from where the file system is to be mounted.  In the most cases this will be an NFS volume and the usual notation
       host:pathname is used to indicate the remote filesystem and path to be mounted.	If the filesystem to be mounted begins with a /  (such	as
       local /dev entries or smbfs shares) a : needs to be prefixed (e.g.  :/dev/sda1).

EXAMPLE

       Indirect map:

	 kernel    -ro,soft,intr       ftp.kernel.org:/pub/linux
	 boot	   -fstype=ext2        :/dev/hda1
	 windoze   -fstype=smbfs       ://windoze/c
	 removable -fstype=ext2        :/dev/hdd
	 cd	   -fstype=iso9660,ro  :/dev/hdc
	 floppy    -fstype=auto        :/dev/fd0
	 server    -rw,hard,intr       / -ro myserver.me.org:/ 
				       /usr myserver.me.org:/usr 
				       /home myserver.me.org:/home

       In the first line we have a NFS remote mount of the kernel directory on ftp.kernel.org.	This is mounted read-only.  The second line mounts
       an ext2 volume from a local ide drive.  The third makes a share exported from a Windows	machine  available  for  automounting.	 The  rest
       should be fairly self-explanatory. The last entry (the last three lines) is an example of a multi-map (see below).

       If  you use the automounter for a filesystem without access permissions (like vfat), users usually can't write on such a filesystem because
       it is mounted as user root.  You can solve this problem by passing the option gid=<gid>, e.g. gid=floppy. The filesystem is then mounted as
       group  floppy  instead of root. Then you can add the users to this group, and they can write to the filesystem. Here's an example entry for
       an autofs map:

	 floppy-vfat  -fstype=vfat,sync,gid=floppy,umask=002  :/dev/fd0

       Direct map:

	 /nfs/apps/mozilla	       bogus:/usr/local/moxill
	 /nfs/data/budgets	       tiger:/usr/local/budgets
	 /tst/sbin		       bogus:/usr/sbin

FEATURES

   Map Key Substitution
       An & character in the location is expanded to the value of the key field that matched the line (which probably only  makes  sense  together
       with a wildcard key).

   Wildcard Key
       A  map  key  of	*  denotes a wild-card entry. This entry is consulted if the specified key does not exist in the map.  A typical wild-card
       entry looks like this:

	 *	   server:/export/home/&

       The special character '&' will be replaced by the provided key.	So, in the example above, a lookup for the key 'foo' would yield  a  mount
       of server:/export/home/foo.

   Variable Substitution
       The  following  special	variables will be substituted in the key and location fields of an automounter map if prefixed with $ as customary
       from shell scripts (Curly braces can be used to separate the field name):

	 ARCH		Architecture (uname -m)
	 CPU		Processor Type
	 HOST		Hostname (uname -n)
	 OSNAME 	Operating System (uname -s)
	 OSREL		Release of OS (uname -r)
	 OSVERS 	Version of OS (uname -v)

       autofs provides additional variables that are set based on the user requesting the mount:

	 USER		The user login name
	 UID		The user login ID
	 GROUP		The user group name
	 GID		The user group ID
	 HOME		The user home directory
	 HOST		Hostname (uname -n)

       Additional entries can be defined with the -Dvariable=Value map-option to automount(8).

   Executable Maps
       A map can be marked as executable. A program map will be called with the key as an argument.  It may return no lines of output  if  there's
       an error, or one or more lines containing a map entry (with  quoting line breaks). The map entry corresponds to what would normally follow
       a map key.

       An executable map can return an error code to indicate the failure in addition to no output at all.  All output sent to	stderr	is  logged
       into the system logs.

   Multiple Mounts
       A multi-mount map can be used to name multiple filesystems to mount.  It takes the form:

	 key [-options] [mount-point [-options] location...]...

       This  may  extend  over multiple lines, quoting the line-breaks with `'.  If present, the per-mountpoint mount-options are appended to the
       default mount-options.

   Replicated Server
	 Multiple replicated hosts, same path:
	 <path> host1,host2,hostn:/path/path

	 Multiple hosts, some with same path, some with another
	 <path> host1,host2:/blah host3:/some/other/path

	 Multiple replicated hosts, different (potentially) paths:
	 <path> host1:/path/pathA host2:/path/pathB

	 Mutliple weighted, replicated hosts same path:
	 <path> host1(5),host2(6),host3(1):/path/path

	 Multiple weighted, replicated hosts different (potentially) paths:
	 <path> host1(3):/path/pathA host2(5):/path/pathB

	 Anything else is questionable and unsupported, but these variations will also work:
	 <path> host1(3),host:/blah

UNSUPPORTED

       This version of the automounter supports direct maps stored in FILE, NIS, NISPLUS and LDAP only.

SEE ALSO

       automount(8), auto.master(5), autofs(8), mount(8).  autofs_ldap_auth.conf(5)

AUTHOR

       This manual page was written by Christoph Lameter  <chris@waterf.org>,  for  the  Debian  GNU/Linux  system.   Edited  by  H.  Peter  Avian
       <hpa@transmeta.com>, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org> and Ian Kent <raven@themaw.net>.

								    14 Jan 2000 							 AUTOFS(5)