Re: direct vs indirect maps??

["Peter C. Norton" <spacey-autofs@lenin.net>]

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.