autofs is a program for automatically mounting directories on an as-needed basis. Auto-mounts are mounted only as they are accessed, and are unmounted after a period of inactivity. Mounting a remote share through fstab remains mounted unless you unmount it. Automounting NFS/Samba shares conserves bandwidth and offers better overall performance compared to static mounts through fstab. Furthermore fstab might cause problems if the remote share becomes unavailable, resulting in stale mounts. For example, the file server you are connecting to might crash or the network might go down.
Install autofs
To start, first install autofs through.
For Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install autofsFor Red Hat, Fedora and CentOS
sudo yum install autofsSelect or create a mount point
Create a mount point or choose an existing folder (such as /mnt or /media) to act as the mount point.
A mount point is where you want your shared folder to appear. Generally on Windows based machines, they would create a new drive such as a D drive or Z drive.
To create a mount point, simply create a new folder where you wish your mounts to be e.g. /mymount, /home/calvin/networkmounts, etc.
Mount point configuration
You will need to define mount points to indicate how to connect to your network shares.
Create a new file in /etc/. I like to name this after my mount point e.g. if I chose /mnt I would name it auto.mnt but if I chose /mymount I would use auto.mymount.
Edit the master autofs configuration file at the bottom
sudo nano /etc/auto.masterAdd the mountpoint to the bottom
/mnt /etc/auto.mntNow create the auto.mnt file
sudo nano /etc/auto.mntThere are several types of mounts and each differs in their configuration.
SMB
Add the following line to your auto.mnt file
folder server:/Where 'folder' indicates the folder to be created under /mnt to host your shares. e.g.
qnapfs 192.168.0.2://NFS
Add the following line to your auto.mnt file
folder -fstype=nfsv4 server:/Where 'folder' indicates the folder to be created under /mnt to host your shares. e.g.
qnapfs -fstype=nfsv4 192.168.0.2://The client needs the same changes to /etc/default/nfs-common to connect to an NFSv4 server. In /etc/default/nfs-common we set:
NEED_IDMAPD=yes
NEED_GSSD=no # no is defaultCIFS
Add the following line to your auto.mnt file.
folder -fstype=cifs,rw,noperm,username=myuser,password=mypass ://example.com/shrnameIf you are using a domain, specify it like so:
folder -fstype=cifs,rw,noperm,username=myuser,domain=domain.com,password=mypass ://example.com/shrnameCheck your share
Reboot and attempt to access your share.
ls /mnt/folder
cd /mnt/folderIf it does not work, you will have to debug it
- Stop the autofs daemon
sudo service autofs stop- Run automount in the foreground with verbose information
sudo automount -f -v- From another terminal, try to mount your file-systems by changing directories into the mountpoint.
- Check the output from the first terminal for clues as to why the mount failed or was not attempted.