Autofs home dirs over NFS without masking local ones?

If I use an auto.master like:

/home /etc/auto.home --timeout=60

then when autofs mounts /home any local home directories are masked. This
is fine if *all* home directories are mounted over NFS.

However, I want to mount *some* home directories and some not.

One solution would be to simply put the NFS mounted home directories
somewhere else. But that would be inconsistent. Why should I have some
home directories scattered about.

Another solution would be to mount the home directory somewhere else
and then create a soft link to it (e.g. cd /home && ln -s /mnt/miallen
miallen). But having a link for a home directory is sub-optimal. You
have no control over it's permissions and some programs can be configured
not to follow links.

So, I ask, what is the best way to NFS mount home directories without
masking local home directories?

Thanks,
Mike

Michael B Allen wrote:

> If I use an auto.master like:
>
> /home /etc/auto.home --timeout=60
>
> then when autofs mounts /home any local home directories are masked. This
> is fine if *all* home directories are mounted over NFS.
>
> However, I want to mount *some* home directories and some not.

Not possible in the general sense - automounters work by mounting an autofs
filesystem over, in this case, /home, so all the contents are masked as
soon as the automounter starts.

That doesn't preclude "interesting" solutions, one of which I'll propose
below (there are probably others).

> One solution would be to simply put the NFS mounted home directories
> somewhere else. But that would be inconsistent. Why should I have some
> home directories scattered about.

That's what /etc/passwd is for - though I do understand your desire for
uniformity.

> Another solution would be to mount the home directory somewhere else
> and then create a soft link to it (e.g. cd /home && ln -s /mnt/miallen
> miallen). But having a link for a home directory is sub-optimal. You
> have no control over it's permissions and some programs can be configured
> not to follow links.

One way would be to put the local home directories in the automounter map
and set up autofs onto another area - eg /homes (or vice-versa - move
the "real" local home dirs somewhere else.

autofs on linux is bright enough to bind mount local filesystems, so there
is no loss of efficiency.

> So, I ask, what is the best way to NFS mount home directories without
> masking local home directories?
>
> Thanks,
> Mike


Cheers

Tim

Tim S <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> One way would be to put the local home directories in the automounter map
> and set up autofs onto another area - eg /homes (or vice-versa - move
> the "real" local home dirs somewhere else.

Possibly restructure the /home directory as follows:

/home/local
/home/network

The /home/network directory is mounted /autofs, and /home/local mounts as
/home does now.

Regards,

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley
393 Quinton Road West
QUINTON
Birmingham
B32 1QE

Telephone: (0121) 247 1596
International: 0044 121 247 1596

Email: markhobley at hotpop dot donottypethisbit com

http://markhobley.yi.org/

Michael B Allen <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

> So, I ask, what is the best way to NFS mount home directories without
> masking local home directories?

I can think of a couple of possibilities. I don't use autofs for
/home, instead I use it for each user's home directory individually.,
like this:

becca -fstype=nfs snowball:/snowball_home/becca

(my file server, snowball, is also one of my workstation; all home
directories are actually in /snowball_home/; they get mounted in /home
as needed). This requires a line per home directory, of course.

Another option is to learn about unionfs, a fuse filesystem that
somehow merges the contents of two directory trees (I've never used
it, so don't know how well it will really work).

On 2007-04-22 05:09, Michael B Allen wrote:
> If I use an auto.master like:
>
> /home /etc/auto.home --timeout=60
>
> then when autofs mounts /home any local home directories are masked. This
> is fine if *all* home directories are mounted over NFS.
>
> However, I want to mount *some* home directories and some not.
>
> One solution would be to simply put the NFS mounted home directories
> somewhere else. But that would be inconsistent. Why should I have some
> home directories scattered about.
>
> Another solution would be to mount the home directory somewhere else
> and then create a soft link to it (e.g. cd /home && ln -s /mnt/miallen
> miallen). But having a link for a home directory is sub-optimal. You
> have no control over it's permissions and some programs can be configured
> not to follow links.
>
> So, I ask, what is the best way to NFS mount home directories without
> masking local home directories?
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>

Do as in solaris , and have your local homes in /export/home ,
then add to /etc/auto.home

+auto.home
* localhost:/export/home/&

This should (I guess) look for users not found in the auto.home map
in your /export/home/* and mount them in /home

/birre