[ale] fstab vs automounter for NFS home directories

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Tue May 31 17:59:02 EDT 2016


I use fstab for data dirs and automounter for home dirs. Many more users
than data dirs so it saves some memory in each machine to only track active
users.

If automounter isn't working but manual mount is, it's not firewall but a
mapping bug or a dns issue. I have to run my own dns and have even the dhcp
machine set to use my dns. Part of that is for freeipa and other is for
automount. I used the server IP for a while but have a reconfig approaching
where names will make my life easier.
On May 31, 2016 5:34 PM, "Todor Fassl" <fassl.tod at gmail.com> wrote:

> Is there any drawback to mounting the NFS share for home directories in
> the fstab versus using the automounter?
>
> For example, I could put a line in /etc/fstab like this:
> nfshome:/export /home nfs4 defaults 0 0
>
> Or I could have the automounter mount /home/username when the user logs
> in. I'm currently doing it via the automounter -- in fact, I always have.
> I've never actually configured a machine to mount at boot time an nfs share
> to use for home directories.
>
> PS: The reason I am thinking of not using the automounter is that we ran
> out of office space in my building and we put a single user in another
> building. I can't get the automounter to work. Mounting home directories
> works if I type in a mount command:
>
> mount -t nfs nfshome:/export/username /home/username
>
> But the automounter does not work. Neither does showmount. If I type
> "shomount -e nfshome", it times out after about 30 seconds. I suspect a
> firewall issue wrt the portmapper (port 111). I put a packet sniffer on the
> nfs file server and it usually gets a UDP packet on port 111 from a
> workstation doing a showmount. But that packet does not arrive when the
> showmount is done from the workstation with the problem.
>
> --
> Todd
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