autofs mount server:/home via NFS

[markcowley]

Hi folks, I've been updating/configuring 3 Dapper Drake Kubuntu systems for about a week now and can't seem to solve the final () problem!

I have a server running NIS and nfs. *most* home directories are on this server, and I want autofs to auto-mount the users home dir whenever they log in to any computer.

I've tried various versions of configurations, and successfully implemented: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...nfs-mount.html

NB users home dirs are at server:/export/home/<user>, and client:/export/home does exist on all clients.

I am exporting the directories from the server:

mark@server:~$ cat /etc/exports
/export/home/echan *.littlelab.bioinformatics.unsw.edu.au(rw,no_root_ squash,async)
#/export/home *.littlelab.bioinformatics.unsw.edu.au(rw,no_root_ squash,async)
/project52 *.littlelab.bioinformatics.unsw.edu.au(rw,no_root_ squash,async)

mark@server:~$ ls /export/home
chrisc/ echan/ jluo179/ lost+found/ mark/ mliu/ plittle/ rwilliams/

and on a client:

mark@client1:~$ cat /etc/auto.master
/export/home /etc/auto.littlelab --timeout 10
/misc /etc/auto.misc2 --timeout 60

mark@client1:~$ cat /etc/auto.master
echan -rw,soft,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 server:/export/home
#* -rw,soft,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 server:/export/home

Now when I log in to a client using say the echan login:

mark@client2:~$ ssh echan@client1
Could not chdir to home directory /export/home/echan: No such file or directory
echan@client1:/$

Due to the potentially large-ish number of users on the server, i'd like to export all of their home dirs, not one at a time (ie export the server:/export/home/* directories) and on the client end, I'd like to automount any subdirectory of client:/export/home/<user>. You can see that I've commented these options out in the various config files.

I've restarted the nfs-kernel-server process on server and autofs services on the client(s).

What am I doing wrong

cheers, Mark

[arizonagroovejet]

Re: autofs mount server:/home via NFS

Well I'll take a bash at helping as I have some experience with automount.

and on a client:

mark@client1:~$ cat /etc/auto.master
/export/home /etc/auto.littlelab --timeout 10
/misc /etc/auto.misc2 --timeout 60

mark@client1:~$ cat /etc/auto.master
echan -rw,soft,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 server:/export/home
#* -rw,soft,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 server:/export/home

That confuses me. You appear to be doing the same command (cat /etc/auto.master) on the same machine (client1) and getting two entirely different results.


Have you tried making /export on the clients an empty directory?
We use automount where I work (though the clients obselete Fedora versions, the server is Solaris and the automount map is on the server and found via NIS rather than present on each client as yours appears to be.) Users's home directories are all stored on the server at /blah/xxx/username where xxx is one of about a dozen different values. On the clients /blah is empty. We found that if the dozen or so different xxx directories existed on the client then automounting would not work.

Are you sure the clients know which NIS domain they are in? (Try running the 'domainname' command if you have it.)