Manual Pages  — AUTO_MASTER

 mountpoint map_name [-options]

map_name specifies map to use. If map_name begins with -, it specifies a special map. See MAP SYNTAX below. If map_name is not a fully specified path (it does not start with/), automountd(8) will search for that name in /etc. Otherwise it will use the path as given. If the file indicated by map_name is executable, automountd(8) will assume it is an executable map. See MAP SYNTAX below. Otherwise, the file is opened and the contents parsed.

-options is an optional field that starts with - and can contain generic filesystem mount options.

The following example specifies that the /etc/auto_example indirect map will be mounted on /example.

/example auto_example

 key [-options ][mountpoint [-options ]]location [...]

 key [-options ]location

key is the path component used by automountd(8) to find the right map entry to use. It is also used to form the final mountpoint. A wildcard (‘*’) can be used for the key. It matches every directory that does not match other keys. Those directories will not be visible to the user until accessed.

The options field, if present, must begin with -. When mounting the filesystem, options supplied to auto_master and options specified in the map entry are concatenated together. The special option fstype is used to specify filesystem type. It is not passed to the mount program as an option. Instead, it is passed as an argument to mount -t. The default fstype is ‘nfs’. The special option nobrowse is used to disable creation of top-level directories for special and executable maps.

The optional mountpoint field is used to specify multiple mount points for a single key.

The location field specifies the filesystem to be mounted. Ampersands (‘&’) in the location field are replaced with the value of key. This is typically used with wildcards, like:

*       192.168.1.1:/share/&

The location field may contain references to variables, like:

sys       192.168.1.1:/sys/${OSNAME}

Defined variables are:

ARCH	Expands to the output of uname -p.
CPU	Same as ARCH.
HOST	Expands to the output of uname -n.
OSNAME	Expands to the output of uname -s.
OSREL	Expands to the output of uname -r.
OSVERS	Expands to the output of uname -v.

Additional variables can be defined with the -D option of automount(8) and automountd(8).

To pass a location that begins with /, prefix it with a colon. For example, :/dev/cd0.

This example, when put into /etc/auto_example, and with auto_master referring to the map as described above, specifies that the NFS share 192.168.1.1:/share/example/x will be mounted on /example/x/ when any process attempts to access that mountpoint, with intr and nfsv4 mount options, described in mount_nfs(8):

x -intr,nfsv4 192.168.1.1:/share/example/x

Automatically mount an SMB share on access, as a guest user, without prompting for a password:

share -fstype=smbfs,-N ://@server/share

Automatically mount the CD drive on access:

cd -fstype=cd9660 :/dev/cd0

+auto_master

Those entries cause automountd(8) daemon to retrieve the named map from directory services (like LDAP) and include it where the entry was.

If the file containing the map referenced in auto_master is not found, the map will be retrieved from directory services instead.

To retrieve entries from directory services, automountd(8) daemon runs /etc/autofs/include, which is usually a shell script, with map name as the only command line parameter. The script should output entries formatted according to auto_master or automounter map syntax to standard output. An example script to use LDAP is included in /etc/autofs/include_ldap. It can be symlinked to /etc/autofs/include.