direct vs indirect maps??

direct vs indirect maps??

[Jim Kusznir]

Hello again:

I've found references to "direct" and "indirect" maps throughout the 
various autofs documentation.  However, I have not yet found an 
understandable definition of what the difference is.  Could someone 
enlighten me?

Thanks!
--Jim

Re: direct vs indirect maps??

[Steinar H. Gunderson]

On Tue, Oct 04, 2005 at 04:50:00PM -0700, Jim Kusznir wrote:
> I've found references to "direct" and "indirect" maps throughout the 
> various autofs documentation.  However, I have not yet found an 
> understandable definition of what the difference is.  Could someone 
> enlighten me?

Direct maps are relative to /, indirect maps are relative to some other path.

(At least that's my understanding of it.)

/* Steinar */
-- 
Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/

Re: direct vs indirect maps??

[Peter C. Norton]

On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 03:43:51AM +0200, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 04, 2005 at 04:50:00PM -0700, Jim Kusznir wrote:
> > I've found references to "direct" and "indirect" maps throughout the 
> > various autofs documentation.  However, I have not yet found an 
> > understandable definition of what the difference is.  Could someone 
> > enlighten me?
> 
> Direct maps are relative to /, indirect maps are relative to some other path.
> 
> (At least that's my understanding of it.)
> 

A practical way to think about it is that direct maps are things that
you may otherwise put into /etc/fstab except that you may want them
centrally controlled.

It's the way to fake a common federated namespace - like AFS - which
lets you create the same mountpoints on all systems even if the fstab
format is different and even if the server changes once in a while.

Except it doesn't actually work on linux yet, but the team here seems
to be really trying to get this one done.

-Peter

-- 
The 5 year plan:
In five years we'll make up another plan.
Or just re-use this one.

Re: direct vs indirect maps??

[Ian Kent]

On Tue, 4 Oct 2005, Jim Kusznir wrote:

> Hello again:
> 
> I've found references to "direct" and "indirect" maps throughout the 
> various autofs documentation.  However, I have not yet found an 
> understandable definition of what the difference is.  Could someone 
> enlighten me?

I'm not sure how much this will help but Jeff Moyer and myself wrote a few 
words about autofs for his presentation at Linux Kongress.

My writing skills are not that good but perhaps it will help.

In particular reference [5] has more information but it's hard to find on 
the Sun doco site.

http://themaw.net/autofs_linux_kongress.pdf

Ian