Re: disable direct mounts

[Ian Kent <raven@themaw.net>]

devnull@adc.idt.com wrote:
>>>>> We would like to continue to disable direct mounts. The other
>>>>> option is
>>>>> to use a different "auto.master" w/o the auto.direct, but we would
>>>>> like
>>>>> to avoid that.
>>>>
>>>> Why do you want to disable direct mounts?
>>> To solve our /usr/local issue.
>>>
>>> Our NIS master is a Solaris box. We have an entry in auto.direct for
>>> /usr/local that currently points to our Sun Solaris binaries.
>>> The auto.direct is included in our auto.master
>>>
>>> We are considering a move to autofs 5.x as part of our OS upgrade. We
>>> could create a separate auto.master.lnx that does not have auto.direct
>>> in it, but we prefer not to do that.
>>>
>>> "Solving the /usr/local/ puzzle" as the NIS and NFS book suggests is
>>> something we can do, I am just not sure if we can do that right away.
>>>
>>> So someway to disable auto.direct would be useful for us.
>>
>> One thing you could do with v5 is to include a map that has a null map
>> entry for /usr/local.
>>
>> For example, if you are using file maps on each machine you could do
>> something like this in auto.master:
>>
>> /some/mount    /etc/some.map
>> .....
>> +/etc/auto.master.null
>> /-    /etc/auto.map.with.usr.local
>> ....
>>
>> And /etc/auto.master.null would have"
>> /usr/local    -null
> 
> Our maps are served via NIS. The master map include the direct map and a
> few other non-direct maps. Since we used to be a Solaris shop, the
> auto.direct /usr/local point to the location for Solaris binaries.
> 
> This was not an issue with earlier automount version 4.1.3-187 and the
> way it handled (or didn't handle direct maps)

Right, but v5 direct maps behave like direct maps now.

> 
>> Or just add the null entry to the master map itself but then you need
>> multiple master map instances for each arch.
> I am trying to avoid having multiple master map instances for each arch.
> I could just remove the auto.direct for a newly created auto.master.lnx
> and that would solve my problem of having solaris /usr/local on my linux
> machines.

Or add the null entry to the master map on the machines that need it on
install.

> 
> One issue with using /usr/local -null is that you cannot make /usr/local
> reference any other shared location served via NIS maps (e.g: With v4 of
> autofs and auto.direct is disabled, we made a softlink from /usr/local
> to /home/linuxlocal, where /home/linuxlocal was our repository). This
> solved the /usr/local puzzle for us.

I guess that could be a problem.
I don't know how this is handled in other products but if there is a
null map entry v5 will leave it alone. No mount will be done so a
symlink should still be possible.

> 
> Hence the request to disable direct maps.
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> 
> 
>> Note that plus map inclusion is allowed only in file maps and is
>> typically used to add local client map customisations when using a
>> centralized source of map information.
>> This obviously introduces possible problems with different versions of
>> autofs, and possibly with different distributions. For example there was
>> a recent bug in v5 where reading of the master map would stop if the
>> plus included map didn't exist. I'm not sure how version 4 will behave
>> with this either. However, I would expect other vendor autofs
>> implementations to work OK.
>