autofs weirdness - minor directory issue, but seeking understanding

[oshunluvr]

I've never set up autofs before but I'm trying to on my wife's laptop. Since it's mobile, I didn't want a fixed fstab mount and she'd never be happy manually mounting something.

Here's what I've done:

Installed autofs
Created auto.master:

#
+auto.master
/shared /etc/auto.shared --timeout=300 --ghost

Created auto.shared

* server://media/shared

/shared is the folder I want to mount to and this works, but it appears as /shared/shared/<FILES> rather than /shared/<FILES>. I tried using "/" in auto.master instead of /shared, but that just does nothing, I tried "/mnt" instead of /shared thinking I would get "/mnt/shared/<FILES> and I do, but it over-mounts so all the other folders in /mnt are hidden.

I can live with it, but I wondered if there was a way to make it do what I want.

I guess it will be a moot point soon enough anyway as systemd has it's own automount service.

[Snowhog]

Not knowing what you have already reviewed, have you see this? https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Autofs

[oshunluvr]

Yes, that's what I followed that got these results.

[vinnywright]

I've never set up autofs before but I'm trying to on my wife's laptop. Since it's mobile, I didn't want a fixed fstab mount and she'd never be happy manually mounting something.

Here's what I've done:

Installed autofs
Created auto.master:

#
+auto.master
[COLOR=#ff0000]/shared[/COLOR] /etc/auto.shared --timeout=300 --ghost

Created auto.shared

* server://media[COLOR=#ff0000]/shared[/COLOR]

/shared is the folder I want to mount to and this works, but it appears as /shared/shared/<FILES> rather than /shared/<FILES>. I tried using "/" in auto.master instead of /shared, but that just does nothing, I tried "/mnt" instead of /shared thinking I would get "/mnt/shared/<FILES> and I do, but it over-mounts so all the other folders in /mnt are hidden.

I can live with it, but I wondered if there was a way to make it do what I want.

I guess it will be a moot point soon enough anyway as systemd has it's own automount service.

If ,,,I am understanding what I am reading .....it creates the mount point from the beginning part of "auto.master" (/shared,nfs,smb,ect) AND the last part of "auto.shared (/shared,server,data,) so in your case,,,,,,,,,, /shared/shared in auto.master use something distinctive /homeserver ,/srv whatever .

VINNY

[oshunluvr]

Yeah, I guess. With an fstab mount, you get what you enter, with autofs you get that plus the last bit of the shared directory, apparently.

The export is server://media/shared. I also had to mount it as nfsV3 since it failed when I tried nfsV4 option. However oddly - the sub export that only supposed to work with nfsV4 is still there. Weird.

It would help a lot if there was ANY output from autofs. It just fails and no notice. Anyway - I adjusted my links to account for the extra /shared and it works like I want. I just thought it was unnecessary for the extra directory level to be there for no reason or benefit.

Maybe if you had multiple shares mounted this way they collect under a single directory. OK I guess, but not very flexible.

[vinnywright]

why not use /nfs in auto.master then ?

VINNY

[oshunluvr]

The name of the directory isn't really the issue, it just seems that the extra directory layer is unnecessary and restrictive.