UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi, first post here be gentle. Very new to Unix. Using HP-UX 10.20

I CD into a remote directory on one machine

$ cd /net/remote hostname

yet when I do an ll in this directory none of the contents appear. It just is empty.

when I do the same command from another machine,

$ cd /net/remote hostname

do an ll I get to see the entire contents.

I do a pwd on both machines and I am in exaxtly the same place on each.

Why can I see the contents on one machine yet on the other I cant!! please help if you can

ls -all

by any chance ?

Nope tried that. still wont show contents.

got the right user access to list the contents ?

Not sure.

I would think if I didn't it would say permission denied or something, but after an ll command it just says
total 0.
With the other machine you can cd into the directory do an ll and it shows everything thats in there.

Very confusing.

cheers for your help.

First of all, there are two different boxes here. Do you really think that all systems have the same files?

But /net/remotehost is a special directory. That is where a feature called the automounter will automatically mount remote filesystem upon request.

This requires cooperation from both the local and the remote system. It could be that this relationship exists on one of your systems but not the other. Maybe the second system isn't even running the automounter.

Or maybe it is. On that system with the empty directory, try to cd to a subdirectory anyway. You may succeed if the automounter is running.

No. I try to cd to a directory I know is there that wont show up on one machine but is listed on the other machine, yet it says

ksh: "directory name" not found

I just dont understand how two machines looking at one machine cannot see the same thing? All permissions are correct.

What exactly is a automounter?

cheers all for you help, any more suggestions.