From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Subject: Re: making the mountpoints visible all the time (fwd)
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 11:56:31 -0800
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To: Ian Kent <raven@themaw.net>
Cc: autofs mailing list <autofs@linux.kernel.org>

Ian Kent wrote:
> 
> The above works that way without the update.
> 
> I'm not sure that a periodic update really gets us much. Since in most
> sites maps change infrequently.
> 
> On the other hand at work we run a cron every night on all our machines to
> trigger an update of the maps.
> 
> So I'm on the fence here?
> 

Oh yes, a lot of map types support querying "has a change occurred"
(usually in the form of a generation number, or in the case of a file
map, the mtime.)  This absolutely should be taken advantage of.

(For a program map, this complicates the protocol somewhat.  I don't
know necessarily of the best way to deal with that.  It needs some
thinking :)

	-hpa